Fighting Fate and Losing
by Aleycat4eva
Summary: The daily grind still happens, despite all the weird in the world. Money isn't gonna make itself, and people gotta make ends meet. Sometimes though, the average Joe brushes shoulders with the extraordinary without realizing. OC inserts through X-men.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own anything to do with Marvel. TW for the fic will include violence, alludes to abuse, depictions of abuse, character typical sexism, and character typical racism.

* * *

"Are you an idiot? This isn't what I ordered."

Ana smiles, making sure that her expression is edged with faux sheepishness, tinted with just the right amount of self-depreciating apologeticness. It's not a new look for her because she's in the service industry, and that means she smiles. She smiles and smiles, even when she knows for damn sure that drink is exactly what the man ordered. She wrote it down, and read it back, just to be sure, the same she does with every order.

"I'm so sorry sir, I must have made a mistake," she demures with false sincerity.

He sighs, like the weight of his world has been placed on his shoulders, shoving the glass at her in a silent command for her to take it back.

"It's a small one. Just make it right sweet-cheeks. Full pulp, not half," he says, and she forces her grin wider to compensate for the irritation she feels inside. The pet name doesn't bother her much, it's nothing compared to what some of the other customers have done, but she didn't make a fucking mistake.

She takes the glass, though. It's her job.

The moment she breaks through the doors separating the kitchen and the floor, her smile drops, and she's back to her usual resting bitch face. She looks around, but the cooks are busy, and so is the rest of the crew. She knows if she tries to grab the appropriate person for this job, her boss will rain hell down on her. That's just how it works.

So she dumps the perfectly orange juice down the sink, puts it in a plastic crate for the wash, and makes a new one herself, exactly like the last time. Full pulp, not half. The carton cheerfully proclaims it in huge green lettering all along the front, so even an idiot like her can figure it out.

Then she's back out on the floor, serving the drink with a big, fat, fake ass smile on her face.

He takes the new cup with a disapproving glance in her direction. She notices his teeth are yellow when he goes to take a sip, but somehow it works with his dirty blond mustache. The liquid touches his tongue, and he drinks a huge gulp down before smacking his lips exaggeratedly.

"Much better this time," he tells his drink, not even looking back up at her.

"I'm real glad," she drawls. "Sorry again about that."

His silence is answer enough; a casual dismissal of her service and person. He no longer requires her to fix a drink that didn't need fixing, and now she's as of much value to him as the table he's sitting at, or the carpet under his feet.

Ana keeps smiling; because smiling gets her better tips. Nobody wants a dour waitress. Just a pretty face and a pretty smile they can walk all over.

Then it's back to the kitchen for her next table. The place is busy, the usual lunch rush crowding the place. In the next hour alone she must shift out at least twenty burgers, all with some sort of tweak made (no mayo, no 'rabbit food', extra ketchup, Worcestershire on the bun and patty-') and fries. Plenty of fries. Alongside those burgers are other lunch specials, a chicken sandwich or two, and maybe a handful of salads, pasta dishes, and assorted wraps. Nothing fancy. Nothing high class. All served with a smile and a chipper, can-do attitude, for the low, low price of minimum wage.

She gets called a variation of idiot twice more that afternoon alone. Once by a suburban mother type, whose heathen of a child who wailed and refused to touch their pancakes without the eggs and bacon arranged into a smiley face on top. The again by some guy who wanted his burger well done, and blamed her for not cooking it right.

Her shift ends somewhere after the dinner rush dies out, and she never does get her break, but that's fine. Tips were decent today, and that's what really matters.

She disappears out back and breathes in the wonderful, grimy garbage air of a New York alleyway, filling her lungs with grease laden air. The smell will linger on her skin and clothes like it always does, but nobody on the subway really gives a fuck. Nobody even gives a fuck about the guy dressed in a latex kink suit either, because they're all just trying to keep their own shit together.

And really, that's the beauty of public transit, isn't it?

* * *

"Do you remember," Ana asks later that night, pantsless and exhausted. "When we were young?"

Her roommate and lifelong friend looks over from where she's been watching the news report -some re-run about an incident on the Statue of Liberty or some sort of crazy shit- and blinks her hazel eyes. Her pale skin is made nearly luminescent by the glow of the screen, and Ana finds herself admiring the volume of her friends short chestnut hair yet again.

"We're still young," Mac replies.

Ana snorts tiredly and rubs her eye, then freezes half way through to check her hand for eyeliner smudges. Belatedly, she realizes she already washed her face.

"You sound like an old man," Mac continues, shifting a bit on the couch. It was a hand me down when they got it, and frankly, Ana's pretty surprised it's still functional. "Seriously, we're still young."

"I meant when we were kids. Freshman year, when we first met, all sparkle eyes and smiles-"

This time, it's Mac who snorts, a wry expression settling on her washed out skin.

"Ana, you never used to smile. You were the angriest little shit, and I was filled with dreams of grandeur. God forbid either of us sparkle in that town," Mac amends. "The church would have burned us at the stake."

"Which church? There was like three per street," Ana recalls.

Mac nods her head agreeingly. Their town, and all the towns around them, did seem to have an inordinate amount of churches. More than could be filled with the population, surely.

"So many churches," She agrees, "And ticks."

Ana makes a face.

"Oh god, I forgot the ticks. And the chiggers. Why did you remind me?" she asks.

"I reminded you because you have a bad habit of romanticizing the past," Mac says bluntly, not pulling any punches. "You want to remember the big open fields and forest, all the rivers and floating trips, but you never want to remember why we left."

Ana doesn't speak, pursing her lips into a flat line. They're still tinted pink from the garish red lipstick that clashes with her dark skin, but Ana insists customers tip more when she wears it. She pulled out research articles done in France, and her own penned out records to back it up.

"I miss it too, sometimes," Mac confides, "But then I remember that I used to work with a proud Church of Humanity supporter and that we would drive past people who had 'It's not my way, It's God's way' bumper stickers. I remember that people jokingly spat slurs all the time and that you unironically got called them more than once. I remember the factories outsourced, and people couldn't find jobs for the life of them."

Ana looks at her friend from the corner of her eyes. She looks back, steadfast and ungiving.

"We left for a reason, Ana," Mac says. "It was this apartment, with its leaky pipes and mildew, or hiding forever in a trailer in the woods."

"The racism, fanaticism, and job loss is the same here. The trailer could have worked," Ana protests. Because it is. It's definitely here in the city as well.

"The trailer would not have Lengua tacos available at three in the morning," Mac deadpanned.

And really, why is that what cinches it for Ana? Probably because the Lengua tacos from the truck by the bars is fucking awesome.

"Not unless I made them." She countered. "You may, however, have a point."

"I still miss floating trips," she adds after a moment.

She does. She misses the long, lazy days spent traveling down the river, and trying to fish from an inner tube with her collapsible pole. It was an artform she never quite mastered, but became more than proficient at.

"And I miss actual style barbecue," Mac returns, turning her head to the back to the television. The news is back on, rattling off some spiel about the imminent mutant danger, or some such nonsense. It makes Ana wonder if any of the professional's have ever taken a basic biology course because they don't seem to quite get the theory of sympatric speciation.

There is a long pause between them, filled with the quiet of the city. It's not a true quiet, with the constant drumming of their AC unit going on somewhere in the background, and their thin walls letting in the watered down shouting of the apartment beside them, but it's fine. The noises from the street are mostly blocked out by the announcers droning voice, and the ambiance wouldn't be the same without the sound anyway.

Mac drifts off somewhere in between an advertisement for Starktech far beyond their price range, and the forecast for the week, and Ana blinks slowly at her friend, knowing she needs all the rest she can get before she's due to work the morning shift. With a fond smile, she carefully worms her way off the sofa, shuts off the TV, and slips the blanket on the back of the couch around her friend's shoulders.

* * *

There are two main sections of industry in Hunt's Point. Three, if one takes illicit activity into consideration, but that's sorta, kinda, unrelated to the other two.

(Okay, not really, but to get an idea of the third, you need to know about the first two.)

The first is the Food Distribution center. With over eight hundred businesses, and around twenty-five thousand documented workers, the area is thrumming with activity at all hours. The market never really closes or opens for that matters. It just goes and goes, and it fits right in with the theme of 'the city that never sleeps'. It's also where Mac fits in.

Good from all over the world flow into this market. There's fish, fruit, vegetables, spices, dairy, meats of all kinds, and grains of every order. The whole thing is a barely operating chaos, with air that stinks or baking pavement, vehicle fumes, and spoiled produce. The warehouses stretch for long, long rows, and people come in and out, buying and selling. From raw material to the processed, packaged goods you find in a convenience store, it all comes through here by truck, rail, or sea.

The second point of business here ties in with the first. It's the industry built to support this massive undertaking. The waste management, transportation services, retail, inspectors, government overseers, distributors, buyers, and realtors all compose this second part, alongside a great many more that go unmentioned. As a waitress, Ana fits in here.

The third, and mostly unmentioned sector, is the crime that thrives in this area. Hunt's Point is a haven for illegal activity, from gangs to prostitution. Smugglers often hang around the warehouses and docks, and Mac knows for sure that there are at least three different drug dealers on her block alone. Their new neighbor across the hall -a large, built blond guy who she once saw spattered with blood- probably fits into this section as well.

There are other minor career markets as well, but widely it's known that if you live in Hunt's Point, most of your income comes from one of these three, and most often times is subsidized by one of the other two.

Work for Mac starts balls early, hours before the sun has even begun to think of gracing the world with it's light. She has to hustle in the darkness to reach the bus that drops her off at the edge of the distribution center, the hoof it to her station.

From there, it's a quick stretch, and then tons and tons of lifting and shuffling.

The loading bay is brightly lit when she arrives, already full of workers getting in, or just leaving, their shift. The constant beeping of trucks in reverse, machinery in use, and humming refrigeration units mingles with the steady barking of orders in all manner of languages, but mostly Spanish. She clocks in and shuffles over to her boss, a large mans with solemn eyes and muscles like a bodybuilder.

"Bay two, dock eighteen," he rattles off for her, and she nods tiredly and sets off to grab a trolley.

Down at the bay, the truck doors are already open, and another employee is already working on hauling boxes onto their dolly for a special shipment to be set aside. She waits impatiently for them to grab what they need before scooting forward and doing the heavy lifting.

The big orange boxes proudly proclaim the qualities of the fruits inside. Roma tomatoes, grown somewhere in the midwest and ready for sale. She stares at the letters as they jumble in front of her eyes, and tries to remember if she remembers any tomatoes farms where they lived. Mostly, she just recalls corn, soybeans, and cows.

It's four in the morning, and she has another eight hours of this.

Somewhere in between hauling watermelons, and stacking crates of pomegranates, the ambient noises of the dock take a stranger turn. It's not the sharp bark of an order or the lower murmur of trolleys being dragged, but the scuffing of shoes, and a low warning in Spanish.

Usually, Mac would ignore it. Whatever goes on between other people is none of her business. She's no good samaritan with a heart of gold, or even a small town girl with stars in her eyes anymore. The local going on of gangs is nothing to her, and it's actually pretty hazardous to get involved. Usually, she just blocks out the working girls around the buildings and the roaming groups of men that squat around the trucks, or in between the warehouses. She even goes out of her way to avoid them.

But this morning, Mac is weary and frustrated. She just wants to get her work done with, and not have to tiptoe around the dock to avoid danger.

So she drags her trolley right back up to the truck, peers around the side of it, and takes note of the man being herded to the edge of the raised concrete by a local. Getting a good look at the intended victim, she almost turns back. He's almost asking for it, looking like that. Who wears a suit and tie in this fucking neighborhood? It's bad enough he looks like some suburban dad, with receding dirty blond hair, and skin paler than her own, but to top it off with a suit?

Mac spits on the ground in indignation. No wonder he's ended up here.

"Oiiii!"

The assaulter pauses and turns to glare at her. He's not a stranger, which is a surprise, but she's almost certain he was supposed to have clocked off an hour ago.

"Miguel, my friend, I have to unload this truck," she states, half chastising, half pleading.

For a second, he looks passingly sheepish, but then the bravado is back, alongside the hard stare. She notices he has a hand still in his pocket. Either a gun or a knife. For her sake, she hopes it's the latter of the two. Knives have a shorter range.

"And I have to make money," he snaps back waspishly.

She doesn't answer, because deep down, she knows that he realizes she is trying to do the exact same thing. Only, right now, he's about to mug a guy, and she's trying to haul about five thousand pounds of fruit.

"Cage is dock manager right now," she says, and it more of a warning than anything else. Not only is Cage a hardass, but he's a stickler for rules, and he generally doesn't tolerate nonsense on his shifts. He also likes to keep work fairly fast paced, and he'll bust her non-existent balls if he thinks she's slacking.

Miguel swallows, and he looks like he's weighing his options. He just needs a push.

"Look, Miguel, if you shove off, I'll get you a free meal at Ana's," Mac offers temptingly.

He's intrigued, but he doesn't want to admit it.

"A meal? This guy will have more than a fucking meal's worth on him," Miguel barters back.

Mac rolls her eyes. They both know it was more than a meal.

"But does he have Ana? She talks about finding a man, you know," Mac lies through her teeth. Ana could not give a singular fuck about finding a man. "And she always did like your Abuela."

For a moment, his jaw shifts, and Mac thinks he's about to refuse. But something must get to him -maybe it's Ana's big, fake smile, or Mac's reminder that he could get his ass in trouble,- because he drops his hand out of his pocket and backs up a few steps.

"Abuela loves Ana," he agrees, casting her a suspicious glance. "You better not be playing me."

"I ain't got time for playing. I can get you a meal, and maybe a date. That's it," she responds, crossing her arms. As it is, Ana is going to kill her, and she's going to have to buy her friend off with a bunch of food. Which means stopping by Fulton market, and searching through stinking heaps of fish.

She grimaces at the thought, side-eyeing the suit. He doesn't look worth this trouble. Why is she doing this again?

"That's enough," Miguel says in finality, taking a glance back up at the dock. He flashes her a smile "Good luck with work. Tell Ana I will stop by tomorrow."

Mac scowls as he quickly disperses back into the night, disappearing in between trucks. He's not a bad guy, really. Arrogant and cocksure, definitely, but a good worker, at least.

"Thank you," says an even, totally unaffected voice. It takes Mac a moment to realize it's coming from the other guy.

"You sir," she starts, turning back toward him, "Are an idiot. If you're a buyer, go through the front. You shouldn't be here dressed like that unless you're selling coke. And if you are selling coke, you're in the wrong neighborhood. Nobody has money for that here."

He blinks, seemingly taken aback by her candor. He's more amused than shocked, though, if his placid, customer service smile is anything to go by.

"I'm not dealing drugs, no," he informs her.

She raises a hand to her temple because even the way he talks is too nice for this area.

"Just...get to the front. And be careful," she sighs. "I got work to do."

He nods, or maybe it's more of a polite bob of his head, she can't tell. It doesn't matter either way because this is probably the last time she'll ever see him anyway. He's just some random dude, and she probably should have just let him get mugged.

At least now she can work in peace.


	2. Chapter 2

A few months later, they make a cure for Mutants.

When Ana hears about it she loses it, much to the chagrin of Mac. The dock worker just wants to get some smothered hashbrowns after having to hang late at work. They got a shipment of cantaloupe in a truck with a broken refrigeration unit, and when she opened the doors, the reek of rotten fruit had washed out over her like a punch to the face. She still can't get it out of her nose.

"Cure the mutants," Ana spits bitterly, keeping her voice quiet in the din of the diner. She reaches over to pour more water into Mac's cup, despite not being called over. "Forget fucking cancer, or HIV. Cure something that isn't a life threatening disease."

"People with cancer, or HIV don't resist government actions against them," Mac grumbles into her spuds. At least, the people with the diseases listed don't actually have the power to defy said government action. The can get lawyers, but shoot laser beams from their face? Not so much.

Still, Ana's voice is tight when she speaks, and her hands have a white knuckled grip around Mac's cup. The smile that stretches across her face is nothing short of poisonous to those who know her, though to strangers, it might be pretty.

"Think of all the money," Ana hisses, her anger slick like oil. "Money to fund research, draft testing, do studies. The materials, equipment, the labs. Wasted for something that doesn't need to be cured most of the time. Something that isn't endemic with a mile high body count."

Mac doesn't speak, knowing that nothing she says will calm Ana's disgust. Nothing in the world seems to make that girl more passionate than perceived waste, and while Mac sympathizes, she doesn't feel much has changed.

Oh, she's pissed, to be sure. Not for the same callous reasons as Ana is spouting, but because mutants are marginalized and persecuted. Because when somebody brings up the topic, they seem to forget that mutants are just people. Most have to work long hours in shit jobs, just like her. Some can't hide what what they are, and they have to disappear, one way or another, for something they have no control over. Being prejudice against mutants doesn't need a special name, because it's prejudice, plain and simple. And Mac is real fucking tired of bigots in all the forms they take.

She flicks her eyes up to the television in the corner, where video shows riots have broken on on both sides. There are various factions protesting, and the screen occasionally flashes scenes filled with teargas and riots.

She turns her head out the window, and thinks of Hunt's Point. There's still all the same crime in it, still the same nine-to-five grind. Nothing really changed much, for her. She'll just do what she's always done, which is try not to die and make a stand where she can.

However, this diner, right now, isn't the time or place.

"It's fucked up," she comment, feeling like that's all she can do.

Ana bites the inside of her cheek, and huffs out a breath through her nose. Something lively and warm dies in her eyes, snuffed out by a myriad of thoughts she won't voice.

"Same old shit, different day," Ana agrees with a dead tone to her voice, placing the glass back down. She pivots cleanly on her heel, and goes to wait on the next table.

Mac watches her, scanning around the diner, knowing there isn't much she can do about it. Instead, she decides to distract herself. Statistically speaking, the diner probably serves one or two mutants each day, with the number of people that come in and out of here. She wonders if she can spot them.

Of course she can't really point them out. The only strange thing she sees is a lone man in a suit, his nose buried in a newspaper. He looks strangely out of place, and sort of familiar.

As if he can feel her staring, he turns to look at her. He's got a real plain face, and a receding hairline, complete with close cropped maybe blond, maybe brown hair. He's completely unremarkable, in the sort of 'I own a minivan, and my son does football' sort of way, which is at odds with the more dirty, hoodie and cargo pants working class look around here.

She narrows her eyes. The suit from the truck, still alive, and still wearing a suit.

What a goddamned idiot.

She snorts derisively into her tea. It's none of her damn business, really, but she can't help but stop Ana to talk again, under the guise of getting her check.

"What's with Suburban Dad?" Mac asks under her breath, feeling the need to hide her curiosity for some reason. Mutant politics, while a heated topic, doesn't quite seem as personal as this for some reason.

Ana glances around the diner from the corner of her eyes, ghosting over the only person that fits the description. Mac knows that she spotted him, but didn't let her eyes linger to avoid giving the game away.

"I don't know. Started coming here a month or two ago. Tips well, and surprisingly isn't dead yet," Ana says, her voice still empty, and her eyes dead.

"A month or two?" Mac encourages.

Ana sends her a limpid glance, somehow managing to make her smile look exactly the same. Really, those in the service industry are the ones that should win Oscars. Forget all the movie shit. If Mac didn't know her, she would never think that Ana was brimming with disgust and bitterness.

In the back of her mind, she remembers how things used to be. She's not usually nostalgic, but the times are rough, and for some reason memories jumble up in her mind when she'd rather they not. Maybe its the conversation Ana and her had a while back, or maybe it's the vibe hanging around the diner, but for a moment Mac is struck by de ja vu. The thin film of correctness when nothing is right, a sense of placid calm covering incredible violence. The sharp stink of woodsmoke, shouting that rings in her ears-

"A month or two. He likes to talk about the weather, and his eggs sunny side up," Ana says, her tone completely at odds with her expression, snapping Mac back to the present. "You gonna tell me why you want to know?"

Mac shakes the clinging memories and slides her eyes back to the man in the booth, who has gone back to his paper. He doesn't look like he's aware they're talking about him, but that doesn't mean shit. He could be one hundred percent aware of the scrutiny he's under. He could be could be waiting for acting just as much as Ana.

Or, maybe Mac is being paranoid. Maybe she's not in a good frame of mind. Maybe it's just some guy.

 _Stil_ l-

"At home," Mac says, giving in to her gut instincts. Ana hums out her acceptance calmly, waiting for her friend to finish up. The dock loader fishes the money out of her wallet, and slaps it on the table before she gets up.

"See you then," Ana promises, curiosity still shining in her eyes.

"Lookin' forward to it," Mac lies, breezing out the door and onto the packed streets. The warm, exhaust laden air helps ground her, as does the busy sidewalk. These aren't the cicada packed woods of their childhood romping grounds, but the great bustling stretches of concrete jungle instead. The protests aren't anywhere to be seen. She's safe here, or as safe as anyone can be in this day and age.

She scrubs her wrist across her eyes,noting that they feel scratchy and dry. She still needs to clean up the apartment when she gets home, though she'd much rather just fall asleep until her next shift. The bathroom, tiny thing that it is, is getting pretty filthy.

She's manages the sub ride home just fine, walking the rest of the way back. The walkup is mostly empty when she returns, save for their new neighbor. He glances her way, and their eyes meet as she digs for her keys.

There's blood on his cheek, and she's seen kinder expressions on starving feral dogs.

Neither of them speak as she slides the key in and opens her door. She nods just once, and he gives her a solemn nod back as she steps inside.

He's a creepy fuck, that man, but Mac can't say she minds much, especially when they haven't been robbed since he moved in.

* * *

"Wait, that's the guy?" Ana asks later that night, appalled by the explanation Mac has provided her.

Mac sighs, slumping back on the couch a bit more, shrugging her shoulders.

"I just wanted to get my work done," Mac grumbles out, looking at the flaking plaster wall behind her. It's mostly gone, and the two of them often talk about just clearing what little remains in order to either hang up new dry wall that isn't moldering, or wallpaper it, but they never seem to have the time.

Ana points a fork at her, a piece of liver still dangling off the end. Mac makes a face at the meat dangling so close to her, as she always does. Offal has never been to her tastes.

Personally, Ana loves the gamey taste of it. She grew up with dinner tables filled with game meat, and the change to the bland, often insipid store bought variety still bugs her. That's not even to mention the price of it. The average cost of a box of small gauge shotgun shells is around five dollars, with usually ten rounds, coming to just around fifty cents fer slug. A white tail deer can range from anywhere to ninety to one hundred and forty pound of edible meat when cleaned, a wild turkey anywhere from five to ten, and a migrating goose eight to thirteen. Even taking tags into consideration, the value can't be beat.

But the city isn't exactly the kind of place you can take down a goose in. The people in Central Park might get mighty upset at Ana if she tried to cut down overhead costs by snatching up the ducks there, and fishing near the loading bays is questionable at best.

However, none of this is here or there. She's gone off on a tangent in her head again, but Mac's issues really need to be addressed.

"You did it because you have a thing. A complex, if you will," Ana accuses without heat. Obviously the hero thing only extends to strangers because Mac had no qualms about setting Ana up on an outing with Miguel of all people, but hey, at least Mac paid Ana for it.

"I don't. I just wanted to get my job done," Mac protests.

Ana rolls her eyes, shoving the fork into her mouth. She chews it a few times before swallowing.

"Exactly. You wanted to get your job done. Who does that? I would have fucked right off," Ana says.

"Cage-"

"Luke Cage is a hardass, but not unreasonable. You could have explained. Instead, you stopped a man from getting mugged so you could do a job you don't get paid enough for, and satisfy a boss that will never be happy."

Mac opens to mouth to speak, then closes it again. Ana can tell she wants to protest, probably by saying something like 'Some of us can't just ignore work, Ana. We live in the real world' or something similar. Maybe something along the lines of 'You just don't get it.'

Ana isn't sure which. She could probably make a good guess, but she doesn't want to because she's tired, and she doesn't all that much care. About the exact reason Suburban Dad got saved, or Mac's half-hearted excuses that is. She kinda cares about Mac's predilection for good deeds under the guise of selfishness.

She takes another bite of her dinner.

"I think that you refuse to acknowledge your gross Hero Complex because then you might have to do something about it," she tells the short haired woman around a mouthful of food.

"Theoretically speaking, if I had a Hero Complex, it would be entirely balanced by your astounding lack of morality," Mac remarks. "Every day that goes by that you don't come home with ambiguously obtained cash is a win for me."

"Mac, please. We both know I lack the drive to become a criminal."

"You just refuse to settle, drama-queen."

"You're absolutely right. If I can't go big, I'm not gonna do it at all. I would never be so base as to become a common mugger."

Mac huffs, but the corners of her lips still pull up into a grin as she plays around with her own dinner, a heaping bowl of Mac n' Cheese. Something in Ana's chest rumbles happily at the action, and she is struck by how much she cares for her long time friend. The woman sitting across from her brings her such joy, and Ana still isn't tired of seeing her smile.

"If can't go big, you're not going to do it all, eh?" the other woman mumbles.

"Never mind, Mac. You're an awful person," Ana groans, slumping in her seat. She twirls her utensil in her hand for a moment before dropping it on her now empty plate. Her mind is reaching that dull, white-noise filled state that comes after a long shift and a full belly. She'll need to shower and get ready for bed soon, or she's just gonna drop at the kitchen table again.

Mac raises her hands defensively, facial features screwed into faux innocence.

"You said it first, I'm just commenting," the chestnut haired dock worker states.

"Straight to hell, that's where you're going."

"See you there then, cause the saints know your ass is gonna wind up dead first."

Ana rolls her eyes.

"Well, maybe I'll bring Suburban Dad with me, just so we can annoy you there as well," she grouses airily. "You know, cause he's so suspicious and what not."

Mac leans across the table to slug her, and Ana jerks just out of reach, simultaneously scooting her chair back to scramble away and stubbing her toe on the table leg. She curses under her breath, reaching down to grasp her foot, nearly banging her forehead on the table in the process.

"Karma," Mac crows, delighted. "Immediate retribution."

"Fuck your Karma," Ana replies.

"This happened because you're an irritating miser," Mac tells her haughtily from across the table. "This is what you get for pinching so many pennies and badmouthing me."

"That is a non sequitur statement, you dirty hoe. Two entirely unrelated subjects. This happened because you tried to punch me in the boob-"

"-I have never tit-jabbed you. You are the one that always does that," Mac corrects immediately.

Ana cannot deny that fact, but she still scrunches up her nose and rubs her toe. The ache is sharper where she massages it with her fingers, but for some reason, she still tries to soothe it in this fashion, despite it never working. The pain begins to recede a bit, and she rises back up, watching Mac warily. Another punch could be coming. Mac likes to be unpredictable.

Her flatmate raises an eyebrow, perhaps a bit mockingly.

"Shut up," Ana tells her, despite her silence.

Mac grins, and the rumbling in Ana's chest starts up again.

* * *

Phillip J. Coulson, extraordinarily enough, doesn't exactly lead a quiet life.

It's not really surprising, considering his occupation. Being an employee of a pseudo-world governmental system tends to come with an elevated level of excitement. It also tends to skew his view on what quiet really means. For example, lately quiet means that nobody is actively opening fire on his person, or the persons around him.

Intellectually, he knows this is not a good thing.

Handling agents, especially those that specialize in espionage, assassination, and most importantly, information, gives him a strange perspective on what normal is. That is to be expected, and his ability to understand perspectives remains one of his most useful assets, right alongside his ability to remain calm under almost any circumstance. However, lately he feels as if he's getting too out of touch, that his definitions and expectations are altering far too much. As much as he respects those who can always adjust, he also understands that to work for the best of all mankind, he has to comprehend that most of them do not share his definition of quiet. He needs to be more grounded in the troubles of the people he works for, and more knowledgeable about the way their lives go.

He had been going for a while without actually knowing how to put words to this feeling. The oddity of his job had become numbing there for a while. It wasn't until a few months ago, while investigating some rumors of vigilante activity in Hunt's Point of all places, that he was jolted to a realization by a humble dock loader.

When he was accosted by some mugger, he was perfectly confident that he could get his way out of the situation. It would have been simple to do, really. Only, he hadn't needed to, because a perfectly average citizen had stepped up to the plate. She wasn't a spy, likely had no training at all in coercion or diplomacy, but she had called off the assault nonetheless. Not because she was extraordinary, but because she understood. She knew the mugger, understood what motivated him, and non-violently navigated the situation towards a satisfying solution for both parties.

And that had been the wake up call, he now realizes. Those two people, the mugger and the dock loader, were normal, everyday workers, and they knew enough to come to a satisfying conclusion on their own for mutual benefit without escalation. It was so… so jarring. So unprecedented. Nobody had been shot, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise injured.

It was then he knew he had gotten out of touch, and because Phil was never one to just settle, he immediately set about fixing the issue. He would re-set his definition of quiet and normal back to a mutually understood base level that could be empathized with around the globe.

So it was, after a few discreetly following his mugger the next day, he discovered the diner. The perfectly normal, perfectly average, filled with everyday working populace, not-an-agent-in-sight, diner. Perhaps it was a little bit run down, ragged around the edges, and maybe the meat could get a little greasy, but that was fine. That was usual. As in, something everyone in the entire world could sympathize with.

Phil doesn't say this lightly. He means it with every fiber of his being.

He _loves_ this place.

It's just unfortunate, after so many months of avoiding her, he finally managed to be here at the same time as the dock worker that originally recommended it. Spies the waitress and she were not, and though they were particularly subtle, Phil still works for (and with) agents that could teach them a thing, or one hundred.

And now that curiosity has set in, intel will go to work.

"Need a refill?" comes a now familiar voice.

He looks up into the smiling face of his usual waitress, her hand extended to gesture at his half-empty glass of water. Her smile is neat, not too many teeth, and not pulled too tight, but it is betrayed by the amount of times he has seen its exact likeness on her face.

"Ah, no thank you Ana," he declines kindly. He hates being right.

"You know, it's kinda unfair," she simpers, retracting her hand and letting her gaze wander around to the other booths. "You've been coming here for months and you know my name, but I still don't know yours."

Phil gives her a placating smile, and for a moment, her eyes sharpen with recognition. A good thing, too. He did learn it from her. It's amazing what a diminutive grin can do.

"A real shame," he agrees.

For perhaps the first time, he sees her direct an actual emotion at him that isn't basic courtesy, fake cheer, or mild annoyance. Her amused smirk is a lazy thing, and completely at odds with the happy-to-serve food industry persona she has made.

"Like that then," she says, and it's not a question, but a statement.

"Hope that's not an issue for you and your friend," he cajoles.

Ana shrugs, a surprisingly inelegant gesture.

"No skin off my back," she tells him, and he can detect no hint of a lie. In all honesty, she most likely does not care, but has acted out of the interest of her friend. (Partner, maybe? No. Best not to ask in these times…)

"But?"

" _But_ my friend can get curious," she allows.

He hums, spearing the last bit of his loaded hashbrowns on his fork. They do the dish a service here, the potatoes crispy yet moist, and the fillings usually coming in fresh from the warehouses not too far from here.

"I'll take that as an advisement," Phil guesses. A warning even.

She reaches out, only to think better of it. The aborted gesture, if he had to guess, would have been a friendly pat on the shoulder. A shame, he thinks, that something has made her second guess that instinct.

"Just keep as you are. She can get over it, and far as I can tell, you mind your own business. It's only fair we do the same," she grants him, and it's strangely touching how sincerely she means that statement.

"That's very kind of you, Ana."

She snorts, waving her hand and angling her body away from him as something at another table catches her attention. She plasters on her waitress smile once more as the trio scarfing down waffles at an alarming rate waves her over.

"Nah," she says, her tone at odds with her expression. "Just understand the value of secrets."

Her words caused Phil to grin into his food, and he makes sure to leave extra on her tip this time around. After all, a little positive reinforcement never hurts.


	3. Chapter 3

It's almost three in the morning, and usually both girls would be asleep.

However, both Mac and Ana scheduled this long beforehand, and there is no work for either of them tomorrow. Sure, they will still most likely feel the interruption of their circadian rhythms when they do have to return to the daily grind, but that's a problem for future them. The them (they?) of tonight are currently too busy being mildly intoxicated on the front steps of their apartment building to really give a shit.

Distantly Mac realizes it's dangerous, in the same way walking in the woods during deer season is. Which means shit could happen, and it wouldn't be unsurprising, but the gamble is played by many and often. Yes, they are two women hanging out on their own under the influence in a shaky neighborhood, and drinking on the streets might be illegal, but consider this; whiskey.

She thought so.

Not only that, but they have taken some precautions. Nobody can see them from the sides, their backs braced up against the cement railings of the steps. Anyone on the street would have to look hard into the shadows to see them. It's almost like a game.

She grins at her own thoughts, leaning against the cement that doesn't seem to be cold enough. The air is muggy to her, moist and warm against her skin with only the barest promises of autumn weather. She honestly can't be thankful enough for that last bit. The heat has never been her favorite, though her roommate might disagree with her choice.

Mac slides her eyes over to the woman in question, who is staring up at the sky with a far off look in her eyes that's half dead, and half bemused, her own glass hanging delicately in her hand. The harsh glow of the city lights throws dramatic shadows over her face, and after checking her own hand, she supposes the same must be true for her as well. Her brain, toeing that line between pleasantly buzzed and actually sloshed, is reminded of the Edward Hopper painting 'NightHawks' for no damn discernable reason.

"Oi," Mac says, nudging her friend. "What you thinking about?"

Ana cranes her head back to earth, fixing her gaze on Mac.

"Stars. Envy. Mutants," she answers nonsensically.

Mac snorts, kicking Ana lightly in the shin. Her friend casts a baleful glance at where the shoe touched her skirt, inspecting the fabric for any stains.

"Wanna clarify that? Or was you just being dramatic?" Mac asks, mentally catching the 'was' after it comes out of her mouth. "Were," she amends belatedly, wishing she could fix verbal typos like she could fix a written document. However, there is no white out for sound, or jumping back in time for this type of thing.

Ana smirks at her, obviously having caught the slip as well, and Mac scowls playfully before shoving her none too gently, causing her to grunt and fumble with her cup.

"Bitch," she fires back, but Mac grins at the name.

"Seriously though. Explain those thoughts," Mac demands. "It's rare for you to be this vague."

Ana rolls her eyes, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear and taking a sip from her drink to bolster herself. Refreshment obtained, she turns her slightly glassy gaze to Mac, inhaling in a manner that betrays just how much she has to say on the subject.

"Okay. Okay, one? You can't see the stars here, 'cept for like, one or two, and that was bugging me. Two? Two was-"

"-Envy," Mac supplies helpfully.

"-Envy, right. Specifically the jealousy I feel for people who won the genetic lottery and became mutants," she explains.

Mac stops grinning and sighs, causing Ana to furrow her brows. Mac shoves her friend again, this time harder.

"Ana, saints help me," she scolds. "They are being persecuted!"

"Mac, you know damn well I'm upset about that nonsense. It's shitty. It's wasteful," Ana replies in all seriousness. "But look me in the eyes and tell me others aren't facing persecution just as bad that the media doesn't acknowledge, people who don't have wings or telepathy. Tell me Paulo wasn't being persecuted when they put him behind bars with maximum felony charges for a first time offense. Tell me prisoners aren't being persecuted with slave labor, neglect, and often times abuse. Tell me muslims and gays aren't terrorized in the same way mutants are, thrown out of their house, beaten to death, openly threatened-"

"Ana," Mac interjects.

"-Tell me Native Americans still aren't being treated the same way. That we aren't fucking them just as hard. I'm not romanticizing it. This isn't a one time thing Mac, not now, not in any history book-"

"Ana, I fucked up," Mac slurs lightly, and Ana stumbles to end of her own rant, looking confused. Her bewilderment at the admission written on her face, like she can't figure out which way to move her features around. "I'm sorry. Tell me why you're jealous now?"

"Ew," Ana comments after a second of thought. "Did you just honestly apologize?"

Mac nods even though it makes her head spin a little. Funnily enough, the lights help stabilize her where they jut out from the streets and red brick walls. Little starburst of illumination that assist her in finding her balance,even the moving ones from a car very slowly turning down their street.

"Gross."

" _Ana._ "

"Alright!" Ana relents, still fidgeting from the honest display of emotion. At this point, it might be another complex of hers, but Mac stopped keeping track of the ones they qualified for ages ago. The laundry list for their issues would be extensive at this point in their lives, and they don't need the reminder when they have to live it.

"I just… 'Mutant and proud' has a nice ring to it. The large majority of mutations in nature are non beneficial to the organism, like cancer, but mutants get fucking sick adaptations that lead to superpowers. They get the power to stand out, to fight back effectively, to have their voice be heard, not…." Ana trails off. Her face falls a bit, twisting into a dour frown. She doesn't finish the statement, but she doesn't need to.

Mac sighs. "Still, persecution is persecution Ana," she says after a moment.

"Wonder what it's like to live without it," Ana replies bitterly, tilting her head to look down the sidewalk. Mac follows her gaze and sees their neighbor, his large figure wrapped up tight in a dark trench coat. He barely glances at them as he nears, his nose scrunching at something he smells.

Her flatmate drops her voice low, leaning in close to whisper in Mac's ear. She can feel the soft tickle of Ana's breath against her skin, smelling faintly of gin and mint.

"See, I bet he never faced it. Strong manly man with pale skin. Bet he never worries about getting assaulted at night, getting randomly hurt-"

-And like the universe is aiming to prove her friend wrong, the car passing down the street angles just so with the man walking past them up the stairs. There comes a sharp burst of gunfire, a rhythmic crack-crack-crack that seems to split the air.

Time and perception go all funky to Mac then, because her mind is racing a million miles a minute, but going nowhere at all. Instinctively her body tries to melt into the thick cement railing they are leaning against, while some sick corner of her brain ponders what caliber was being used, because it sounded fairly large. She's hyper aware of the scrape of concrete against her palms, and the sound of squealing tires bouncing between the tall buildings, echoing like a voice in a canyon. Ana jerks her head away from Mac's to curl it down by her chest, becoming a smaller target, and the temperature change is alarming.

' _Drive by_ ,' her mind informs her on repeat as she watches the upper half of their neighbor spontaneously sprout holes. The parts of his body above the banister jerk as the bullets rip into him, and it actually looks like he's being knocked around by it. For a second she has the hysterical thought that he looks like a puppet twitching on its strings. ' _Oh mother Mary, drive by for him. We're going to die in the crossfire_.'

Sure enough, he goes down hard, falling chest down onto Ana's lap. On instinct her friend raises her glass so it won't break, as if he's a stumbling party goer who might spill her drink, not a man collapsing from multiple short range bullet wounds.

For a second there is no sound but that of the car (she didn't even see the model, never mind the plates, it's leaving, didn't see them, safsafesafe-) getting ever farther away, and the wet pops and hisses of somebody trying to breath with holes in their lungs. It's a terrible sound, and red foam bubbles up at the corners of his mouth as he bleeds out all over Ana's skirt, hands scrabbling for purchase.

Something warm and wet touches Mac where her denim clad leg rests neatly touching her friends. She knew somewhere in her head that people bleed out fast, but she never quite realized how that process could be expedited by multiple holes near major arteries. She also never understood that they would bleed out in bursts, great spurts that fell in rhythm with the heartbeat. The blood feels so hot against her already warm skin it's almost scalding.

The holes are small, too. Not great big hunks blown out of his person. Penny sized or a little bigger, but gushing. Everything smells like a poorly kept meat truck unloading, the metallic tang of what she identifies as 'meat scent' mingling with dirty street and the sour smell of booze.

Something moves, catching Mac's eye, and she watches her friend throw back the rest of her now slightly pink tinged drink in one gigantic swallow, her face as blank as a new sheet of paper.

"Shit," Mac breathes. "S-shit."

She jerks into action, dropping her cup and spilling her whiskey down the steps. With shaky hands she clumsily leans upward and attempts to plug up something, anything. There's a hole on his back she shoves her palm down on, but his jacket and shirt slip around, slick with blood, and his gurgles have stopped.

"Ana...Ana help me!" Mac hisses. "Call the police!"

"Mac," Ana says in the deadest voice she's ever heard.

"Cover a hole, do something!"

Very carefully, with some unearthly, terrible calm, Ana grabs wraps her fingers around Mac's wrists, smearing crimson liquid around.

"Mac," she calls. "The universe made a joke."

Mac lets out some high pitched noise between a wail and a groan, shifting around to try and get a better angle while trying to shake her friends vice like grip loose. With her free hand she tries to move his clothes around get a better seal, because maybe if she can seal the skin and keep applying pressure he won't die.

"It's a really fucked up joke," Ana says distantly, staring at the blood seeping into their clothes with that sickening calm. "Some Greek irony shit."

"PLUG A HOLE, ANA," Mac roars.

Almost lethargically, her friend removes a her hand from Mac's wrist and slides it upward until her slippery, liquid coated fingers brush across a bullet graze on their neighbors neck, pressing down with a sickening noise on the now too-quiet street.

"Need to call an ambulance," Mac spits. "Where's a phone? Do you have your phone?"

"In the apartment," Ana answers peacefully.

Mac curses, finally getting the man's shirt and jacket out of the way, expecting the entry wound she was holding before, but for the second time that night, her perception seems to go all funny. The smooth skin of his shoulders is painted bright red with blood, yes, but the holes seem to be almost shrinking. She watches in shock as a cluster just below his scapula twitches, and almost pukes when one slowly, oh so slowly, pushes out a gore covered metal slug the size of a fingernail.

"Ana, I think our neighbor is healing," she croaks.

Ana hums, and Mac glances over to see the wound she has her fingers on slowly shriveling around the edges as well, fractions of a millimeter at a time.

"A fucked up joke," Ana repeats.

But a thousand other things are crashing through Mac's mind. They can't call the cops now. Not with the tensions as they are. This guy would be fucked harder than he already is. However, they can't exactly leave him here on the street. The flesh is healing, but how long will it take for his body to recover completely? He's still losing blood in some places, and there's no telling if some of the bullets inside him bounced around and tore through any organs. He needs help, needs something that can't or won't be provided-

-but it can be, she thinks to herself. They can help him

She stumbles to her feet, more sober than she was just a few minutes ago, and coated in blood. Her hands shake as they smooth the man's clothes back down, and she grips him by his shoulders.

"Help me carry him," Mac orders. He's big, and maybe if he was stiff she might be able to lift him on her own, but he's gone all limp. It's like super dense jello, and she'll need assistance to do this.

"Are we hiding him in a dumpster?" Ana asks, and Mac casts her a truly aghast look. She can't deal with this right now.

"Our apartment," Mac answers back, and thankfully, Ana doesn't say anything else. She squirms a bit, and they heft and shove until they can string his arms over their shoulders, soaking their shirts red as well. It's awkward and fumbling, and he's heavy as fuck, but Mac is running on adrenaline and desperation at this point. Whatever shock is coursing through Ana's head gives her enough foresight to pocket any signs of their drinking before they begin hauling him up, praying that nobody sees, and that nobody cares.

Who is she kidding? In this neighborhood, everybody already probably told themselves that it was a series of cars backfiring, or not their fucking problem. Briefly, and almost hysterically, Mac wonders if Ana was right about the whole Hero Complex thing getting them in trouble, because carrying what she's pretty sure is a half dead mutant whose name they don't even know back to their apartment, covered in blood after having just been bystanders to a driveby that could have ended them both is probably a textbook definition of trouble.

She consoles herself by thinking that at least she only instigated ⅓ of the problem, at most, and that future her probably has more interesting problems than just sleep deprivation to worry about now.

* * *

Ana's seen a lot of dead things in her life. It's not supposed to be an edgy statement, or one that's astoundingly uncommon. It's just kind of a fact. She's grown up witnessing things dying and decaying, and that's not a bad thing.

It's always just sort of been there, death. Hovering around like the fact of life it is, in all its many forms. Death is the dead possum by the side of the road, fur matted and body smeared like paste, almost unidentifiable. It's the empty snapping turtle shell in the woods, the outer layers peeling away, and the fish bones near the shore swarming with flies, stinking so strongly she knows it's there without ever actually having to see it. Death is deer carcasses hanging from front yard trees in the middle of hunting season, glistening pink muscle bared to the sun, the hide stripped away, pride on the hunter's face for a bountiful harvest. It's the chicken neck that cracks under her fingertips, and its limp body jiggling as she plucks the feathers from it.

It's in the smell of hospice buildings, the gentle rot from the inside out that has a weirdly distinctive musk to it. It's the sound of one last rattling breath, and family at funerals throwing ashes to the wind, the smell of carbon heavy in her nose. Sometimes it's the end of brittle bones and tiring coughs, sometimes it's quick and messy like a semi against a hybrid on the side of the road.

And often times, Ana finds that people wanna tell her that a misdeed has been done, having her witness all these things. That experiencing them fucked her up. The same people eat meat from slaughterhouses that kill by the thousands, and turn their eyes away because death happens elsewhere, not here. Not to them.

Ana's here to say that they are wrong. Death happens everywhere, and the gigantic fucking dude on her bed? _This bitch should be dead_.

Nobody walks away from multiple gunshot wounds like this sucker took. He stopped breathing for like a full fucking minute, bled at least three or four liters all over them, and his organs should be nothing more than sacks of meat by this point with the way bullets bounced around inside him.

( _They could have died. Mac could have died. Fuck. Fuc-_ )

Yet, here they are. The day is dawning outside, casting wondrous lights through the curtains of her bedroom, setting Mac's tired, draw face aglow, bringing out the redness of her rounded cheeks, and setting her copper hair on fire. The cleaned, now bare skin of the man is cast in the first rays of dawn, perhaps a little paler than usual, but unmarred by bullet holes and blood. Their apartment smells faintly like ammonia and antiseptic, and his chest rises and falls with steadily as he breathes.

There are fourteen metal slugs in her pocket, an entire magazine's worth of shrapnel broken into chunks and then spat out by his body.

Ana sweeps her hand in the line of Mac's sight, and her friend looks up at her with worried eyes. Ana gestures to her own wet hair and clean skin, fresh from the shower, and then to the open door. It's Mac's turn for the shower.

The other woman hesitates for the briefest of moments, but a glance at her own forearms shows how much she needs one. The blood is flaking and dry, though most of the residue on her hands was washed away when they wiped him clean with boiled saline.

The Irish woman nods and gets up, wincing with the movement after sitting so long. She slides around the bed, and Ana grips her wrist before she can escape, her hold light and caring.

"There's a bucket of ammonia water in the bathroom," she murmurs, and Mac nods. The soak will get the blood out of their clothes and ruin and evidence that might be taken from it. She already doubled back and spot cleaned any drips they made on the way to their apartment, and while Mac is in the shower, she's going to clean up in here as well.

Her friend disappears out the hall, and then it's just Ana and some should be dead guy.

She gets to work, cracking a window to let the fumes out, listening to the sounds of the city waft in. She sweeps up all the flakes she can find and douses the room as best she can before shuffling her way out into the kitchen to make breakfast, her mind strangely numb. She could be irritated at Mac, because they should have just left his ass and pretended it never happened, the same way she could be terrified and shocked because they could have died. Could have been shot to death in a random drive by. She could be elated because they are alive, they didn't die.

Ana isn't any of those things. She's doesn't know what she is, her eyes half lidded as she scrambles near a dozen eggs and sets the coffee to brew in their shitty old percolator. The smell of food overtakes the smell of chemicals as she cooks, adding some leftover liver to another pan as almost an afterthought.

She hears the rustle of cloth and heavy footsteps in the hall over the sound of things sizzling in pans. Mac must be really tired.

"Eat some breakfast babe, and then go get some sleep," Ana says. "You have work sooner than I do, and the apartment is already clean. It's nothing for me to do some laundry."

There's a beat of silence, and she strains her ears to hear the swish of pant-legs rubbing against each other.

"You sure know how to make a man feel welcome," comes the reply that is about twelve octaves too low to be her flatmate.

Ana breathes in sharply through her nose. Yah, no. Sure. This is happening. Okay.

"Neighbor," Ana comments dully, turning off the stove and breaking out some plates.

"The name's Victor Creed," the voice says as she turns to set the table. She can feel his bemusement, and a glance out of the corner of her eyes tells her that he's actually grinning, too sharp canines peeking out over his lips. Something in her stomach clenches, because sure. Sure. Super healing that allows him to recover from death after a short nap, wicked looking sharp teeth, jacked muscles, and probably more. She bets he can lifts cars and shit gold as well, the fuck.

"Ana," she returns in a flat voice, waving for him to take a seat, because why the fuck not at this point? Why not have a shirtless stranger eat breakfast at the table? Are you happy now Mac?

He moves across the room like he owns the fucking place, and it burns her. How lucky can one person get? What are the fucking odds?

"There a reason I'm not on the street or in a dumpster, Ana?" he asks, and the tone of it makes her perk up, if only to be more wary. He locks eyes with her as he sits at the table, and she freezes, feeling the threat. It's a mean look, that smirk and that gaze, one that says he doesn't at all mind things turning violent. That he might break her legs and eat the food she cooked while she screams on the ground.

"My flatmate decided it," she says, staring back at him. She does not blink, does not bow her head, because the moment she does she thinks she loses in his eyes.

"Can't leave the only thing keeping the robbers away to up and die," comes Mac's smooth voice, and Ana nearly drops the scrambled eggs right there and then because: 1) What a fucking liar, 2)She has no patience for Mac's selflessness disguised as greed, 3) When the fuck did she get out of the shower?

Her flatmate, washed clean and smelling of cheap soap, breezes to Ana's side. It seems innocuous, but Ana knows damn well this is them teaming up against a greater threat.

"Breakfast looks good," she comments quickly, and Ana can practically taste the nervous adrenaline running through Mac's system. She enviously wishes she could get a dose of the same to wake up some.

The man at the table seems to agree, because he takes that as a que to load his plate up with nearl all the offal and a large portion of eggs, holding his coffee cup out like a silent request. In response Ana picks up the percolator and pours, only pausing afterwards to realize that it was entirely on reflex.

"Somebody trained you right, doll," he tells her, and something in Ana's chest shrivels up and dies on the spot.

Her look of disgust must be clear because he snorts, cueing Mac to brush her hand consolingly along her back as she sits as well. Ana takes a seat beside her, leaning over to whisper in her friend's ear.

"You're fucking dead to me, Mac," she hisses. "You and your fucking Hero complex. Should have taken him to the dumpster like I said."

Mac cringes guiltily, and across the table, Victor flashes a smile wide enough to bare his freaky ass teeth at them. Something like faded dread fills Ana's chest, and she adds 'super hearing' to the list of abilities he has.

"Shoulda," he agrees.

A beat of quiet follows his statement, and Mac carefully picks her way through some scrambled eggs. Ana snatches some off her plate despite the pan filled with them because she can, and Mac deserves punishment.

"I'm guessing that turning the other cheek and keeping our mouths shut ain't gonna be enough, is it Victor?" Ana asks.

"Nah," he says, helping himself to more food, his voice ominously amused and threatening. "I think I like this."

Suddenly, taking eggs is not enough. Not near enough.

Ana clenches her hand into a fist, rears it back, and punches Mac as hard as she can in the left boob. Her flatmate makes a gurgling sound as she chokes on her breakfast, and Victor laughs and laughs.

Ana hates the sound already.


	4. Chapter 4

Mac is a compassionate person.

She has concern in abundance for all living things really, both big and small. She might not show it the way some people would, might not wear her heart on her sleeve, always ready to lend a listening ear. She has never joined any big groups, never done any charity drives, and never done a days missionary work in her life. She isn't the kind of gal to give her old clothes away to shelters (mostly because her clothes are threadbare, stained, and little more than rags by the time she's through with them), and she's not volunteering at soup kitchens on the weekends either. That's not the compassion she has.

She has, however, a long and colorful history of taking in bent, broken, and wounded things.

It started small enough. Strays, mostly. Old pets abandon on the back-roads, too old to be much use anymore to their owners. Sometimes they were balding in patches, with cataracts clouding their eyes, and yellowed teeth missing. They were still happy though, still domestic and loving, and even if she couldn't sneak them home, she could always sneak them scraps.

Sometimes they were young animals, too small to be left on their own, or otherwise burdensome. These were harder, because she wanted to keep them always, to protect and care for them. It struck her wrong that they could be so tiny, so perfectly healthy and good, yet they would be thrown out in old boxes or just left to die. They had done nothing wrong, had made no errors. Yet they were abandoned.

She did her best to nurse them along, find them new homes if she could. The old ones rarely got second chances, and would often just not show up one day. The younger ones, puppies and kittens, they were harder. Trial and error was the name of the game in those days, and she learned that cows milk can't nourish everything, soft fabric and litter-mates can kill, and the hardest graves to dig were often the smallest in size.

(There's a graveyard in the fields of her childhood home, with rock piles as markers, made up names scratched into stones.)

Every now and again, feral animals would make their way to her as well. Those weren't used to people, didn't care for them one bit. Birds with broken wings, dragged in by the mousing cat, or lizards with missing limbs. From frogs too far from water -an easy fix- and one time, a raccoon with angry eyes and a broken foot. She still remembers having to get a rabies vaccine after that raccoon bit clean through the soft flesh of her hand, and she still wears the faded white scar on her hand to this day.

It lived, though. Even if it hated her guts at first.

There were people too. Neighbors her age with no place safe to go when things got bad, classmates who just needed to be reminded that grades weren't the end of the world. Strangers that were down on their luck, and maybe needed to catch a ride in or out of town. Sometimes it was ice for the guy who got his bell rung because he was a dumbass, and sometimes it was a band-aid for the barkeep who chose the wrong pair of shoes. They weren't always grateful, not always nice, but they didn't need to be.

Victor Creed isn't like any of them.

He's vile, and struggle as she might, Mac can't see why. He's very obviously not like a domestic animal that might be mean because of abuse or pain. He's also not like a wild animal either, because those don't like people in general, and they do their damnedest to maim so they can get away. He isn't drunk, isn't actually wounded, and he definitely isn't scared.

He sits himself on their couch and makes himself comfortable even though his apartment is literally right next door. The six foot something Mutant menaces them without words, wearing a self satisfied grin the whole while. His stares them directly in the eye as he crushes their phones, feigns grabs that send them skittering just out of reach, throws his clothes at Ana to be washed, eats twice the amount of food they do in a single day, and is generally and entitled. It's as if he thinks they owe him now for something, as if they live to accommodate his entire fucking existence.

Who does that? Who just gets violently shot, and then when somebody helps them, starts invading like the Spanish fucking conquest? Well, she sorta answered her own question, considering that's exactly what early American colonist did, but still. Who, in this day and age, acts like this? This controlling, alpha, old timey domineering diskishness is like, two hundred years out of date.

"Where are you going?"

He's laid out on the couch still, nestled into it like it's his now, fully clothed with his boots on. Which, sure, fine. Take the couch, it probably smells like him now, and will never be comfortable again.

"Listen, Victor," Mac say, and she puts so much anger into that name it practically becomes a curse specially crafted just for him. It's four in the fucking morning, she's barely got any sleep thanks to him, and she's angry. "Some of us have to work for a living. This is me, trying to go to work so we can pay rent."

"You leaving me here alone with your friend? Trusting."

"Buddy, listen, I understand. This is probably the first time women have ever been nice to you in your life. For future reference, usually you thank someone when they take you in, maybe do them a favor in the future, not invade their home and threaten them," she hisses.

He laughs. He laughs because he's a huge, gigantic douchebag as far as Mac can tell.

"You kids got fight," he chuckles. "Much better than Logan's brat."

Mac sneers. She doesn't know who the fuck Logan is, or who his brat may be, but she isn't anybody's kid. She doesn't need this six foot monster of muscle with dirty blond hair and a mouth full of carnivore teeth to start playing fucked up father figure. She definitely doesn't need him making those shitty sexist remarks.

If he wasn't big enough to crush her like a bug, and creepy enough to give her the willies, she might do something about it.

"You're afraid of me. I can smell it," he informs her with a leer,as if he can read minds. Which she really hopes isn't among his repertoire of mutations, because there is such a thing as over kill. Considering some of her thoughts today, though, she would probably be dead already if he could.

"That's a tragedy," she comments dryly, masking the terror she feels. "Because if you can smell my fear, then I bet you can smell every puddle of piss in every alley you pass, and every person that touched themselves and never washed their hands."

For a moment, he seems like he doesn't know how to respond to that statement. He simply turns to her and stares, his face illuminated by the white light of the TV.

"You live a sad life Victor," she says, false empathy dripping from her voice. "Getting shot like a dog, smelling stink all the time. We can talk about it some other time, maybe when I don't have to go to work."

Victor seems to figure himself out, because he starts laughing again like it's all one big, fat joke. Maybe Ana was right last night. Maybe the universe did make a joke, only it's Mac's whole life instead of one guy with bullet holes.

"TRYING TO SLEEP IN HERE."

Mac closes her eyes. It's like thinking of Ana summoned her spirit from unconsciousness.

"Great job, Victor."

"Don't you have work?" he bites back, obviously uncaring.

"Bullets don't stick, but has anyone tried lighting you on fire? Curious, asking for a friend."

"Explosives haven't worked. Neither does drowning, any poison I've come across, dismemberment, or asphyxiation," he replies in monotone, his eyes glued to the images reflecting off the television screen. Mac can't actually tell if it's a documentary or a historical drama.

"What kind of life-" she starts, but then she cuts herself off because she honestly does not have time for this right now.

"Back to the drawing board for your friend," he advises her.

"Electric shock?" she shoots curiously, darting around the couch just out of his reach. She doesn't know if super strength or speed are part of his thing, and she's not keen on figuring that out.

"No."

"Sickness?"

"Never naturally."

Worrying implications, that. But then again, these are all some worrying answers. She feels like this isn't her forte. It actually kind of makes her uncomfortable to joke about

"IMPALEMENT THROUGH THE EYE?" Ana shouts from her room, apparently having none of the qualms Mac does. Her Anam Cara is surprisingly hostile, worn down from lack of sleep.

"Never happened, but no one's gonna get that close," he says with the sort of confidence that she, unfortunately, believes he can probably back up.

The apartment above them starts banging on their floor, causing a rain of what Mac prays to the good mother Mary isn't asbestos dust, as if to second her friends statement. Apparently Victor doesn't need those prayers though, because the guy she picked up off the street will take an act of God himself to kill.

Which just means that going to anybody for help seems even less likely to actually procure any assistance. She's not a snitch, but she briefly entertained thought of asking someone if the need arose. However, it seems like that's not an option, and dealing with him themselves just got about forty times more difficult. And it was already hard, so…

Mac slips out the door, rubbing her eyes. She goes to close it, but a hand gets in her way, keeping it open.

She turns, and sure enough there is Victor, somehow having moved without her hearing him. She feels unease bubble in her gut at the thought.

Why did she even care? Why couldn't she leave him?

"What now?" she hisses in demand, using her aggression to cover up her trepidation.

He raises an eyebrow in need of a good trim, just like everything else on him. He needs something to make him look less like a paleolithic neanderthal, and more like and actual person. A razor, or a good wax. Hell, maybe a pair of garden shears.

"Work," he answers.

Mac's upper lip curls, exposing her front teeth. As if it's some sort of unspoken challenge, he looks down at her and displays all of his disturbing pearly whites. She is forced to admit his showing is far more intimidating.

"Are you gonna follow me?" she asks, damning the hitch in her otherwise perfectly pissy voice.

He closes the door behind him with a smirk, brushing his hand along his coat. It occurs to Mac that it it still has holes in it, the edges fraying along the rips. It's no longer coated in blood, thanks to Ana, but it is still very obviously shot through.

The man himself is totally fine, a feral grin growing on his scruffy cheeks.

"Later. You aren't the only one with a job," he tells her.

He brushes past her, bumping her shoulder roughly as he goes. She stumbles, and she thinks she can catch a glint in his eye that promises violence. She doesn't envy whoever get in his way, or whoever he tracks down for retribution this night.

It strikes her that the entire hassle he gave her inside -threatening Ana, questioning where she was going, harassing her- was nothing more than sport. He was already fully dressed when she came out, already planning to leave.

She curses, wanting to chase after him and give him a piece of her mind. Mac knows it would be useless though. Victor Creed isn't an animal. He isn't even a person.

Victor Creed is an _asshole_.

And she's got to get to work.

* * *

They've been playing a game, Ana thinks. They've been playing it for years, and they have been lucky to get such a fair hand for so long.

There are three popular crimes in Hunt's Point, four if one wants to include smuggling. By and large though, the most popular illegal activity in the area is theft. Whether it be burglary or vehicular, stealing is the most common crime committed the area. This is one that Ana and Mac have been victims of before, mostly when they just moved in and hadn't insulated themselves in the area yet.

The second crime, of course, is prostitution. It's got nuances, because it's a crime for the sex workers to sell, it's a crime for the Johns to buy, and there are all the little details in between, including but not limited to the forced aspect it sometimes take,or the coercion and abuse. Neither Ana and Mac are involved with this one much, other than the occasional solicitation that occurs.

The third offense is actually a category in and of itself. Violent crimes including murder, rape, robbery, assault, and all the subtleties of the actions thereof, are not quite as rare as she would like them to be. Not rare at all, actually. According to the spreadsheets, there's a one in thirty four chance of being victim in Hunt's point of either a property or violent offense. Much higher than the national average, but still not the worst.

So really, it makes sense. The longer they stayed, the higher chance they would have of being a victim of some sort. It was all a numbers game, one that's keen on dragging her back in.

Ana vaguely wishes she could correctly identify whatever Victor is doing to them in legal terms. There's no particular reason for it other than to quiet her own curiosity, because it's not like they can go to the police or get his ass locked up for it.

Ana has the sneaking suspicion that if they even tried they would disappear pretty fast, and in a fairly gruesome manner. Oh, Mac and her are probably gonna give the mutant a good run for his money, if only because they aren't the type to just take whatever the fuck he's doing lying down, but she has her doubts about their rate of success. The man just has too much stacked in his corner for this type of game -experience, connections, lack of morals, incredible healing factor, extreme strength, heightened senses, willingness, drive- while she and Mac have too little. If she's honest, their best bet is to cut everything and run. Just her and Mac, enough supplies to last them a week or two, and nothing else. They should leave the same way they came into this city.

Mac probably won't go for that though.

Fucking Mac. Stand your ground, don't give an inch, do good things for the sake of doing them, Mac.

( _Mac is safe. Mac isn't hurtful. Mac is-_ )

Ana shifts her weight, feeling dead on her feet. Her mind is a quite, deadened haze that nobody seems to notice as she walks in between the tables and booths, slinging out burgers and fries. Her feet are like nerveless weights, her legs just appendages to move as she operates on autopilot. Her brain doesn't even feel like it's part of her body at this point, just a third person viewer who gives out commands that her flesh follows like a Stark designed drone.

At least it ain't Hammertech. It actually manages to complete its functions.

"Long shift?"

Ana blinks, distantly registering the oddity of that question. Nobody says that, and the peculiarity of it forces her mind to focus for a second trying to piece it out. Belatedly she realizes she's serving up a grilled chicken sandwich to someone, with a side of extra salted fries.

A receding hairline registers, along with a bland smile. It's Suburban Dad.

"Digging?" She hears herself ask. On some level she realizes it's a bit defensive. He's asking a question, not interrogating her.

He keeps the same smile, one that she returns. If she were a little more observant, she might notice how he get a searching look in his eyes, like she's triggered some dormant instinct, but she's kinda stuck in her head at the moment.

"Just trying to be friendly, Ana."

"My mistake, I'm so sorry sir," she apologizes, but the words ring hollow no matter how falsely chipper her tone is. She wants to wince, but can't summon the energy.

He nods his head acceptingly as she sets his the food down on the vinyl tabletop, generic particle pattern gleaming up at her. Her eyes slide to the scratches etched into it for no reason. She's seen them a thousand times, there's nothing new there. Scuff marks from tableware, and those people who like to scratch their names into things because... well, actually Ana doesn't get why people do that. It's just sort of a dick move.

"Something happen?" he asks, his voice smooth and carefully casual.

' _A mutant got shot down night before last, fell near dead on top of me. My crazy best friend said we should help, and now he's staked out our house as his own. It's been near twenty hours of harassment, almost no sleep, and when I thought I could escape to work, you show up_ ,' she replies in the safety of her own head.

"You have lots of questions today," she states out-loud, still pondering the various scratches on the table's surface.

"You seem a bit distracted."

"That's very observant of you."

"And your answers are very deflective."

Ana continues smiling, her eyes crinkling in the corners. She can feel it on her face the same way she can feel the shirt on her body, or the flimsy charm around her neck. A costume, a reminder.

"Can I get you anything else sir?" she asks. She gets a tingle along her shoulder, the kind that tells her a customer is staring at her in a silent demand for her attention, and she tilts her head to see spot them, scanning the booths near the windows of the diner. Table three looks like they're going to need refills, and the children at six have gotten the majority of their lunches everywhere but their stomach. The mother there looks noncommittal, half-heartedly watching them and doing nothing at all to stop them. Outside the windows the sidewalk is crowded, but one figure in particular stands out to her.

Her stomach clenches, and she feels hollow acceptance settle as nausea in her stomach.

It's Victor, being impressively creepy and looking threatening as hell. She wasn't even aware he knew where she worked. Maybe he didn't though, maybe he tracked her down for a laugh.

He doesn't look to be enjoying himself now, if he ever was. He's glares pointedly at her, then and Suburban Dad, nostrils flaring. He looks grim, his brow furrowed, his hands flexing by his side like he wants to grab something and throttle it.

"Ana?"

She turns back, and Suburban Dad is staring at her. She flicks her eyes back to the window, but Victor is disappearing already in the crowd. She doesn't notice Suburban Dad mirroring her action, trying to pick which person she's looking at until he speaks up.

"Who is it?" he questions softly. It's as if he's speaking to a wounded animal rather than a person. His soft tone grates, because he's just digging.

"Can I get you anything else sir?" she repeats, but she can't summon the right face for it. Her tone is correct, but her smile is gone.

"Maybe you should take a break," he answers, and she can hear the unspoken 'so we can talk' that ends the statement.

She peels her gaze away from the crowd, turning her focus onto the fading paint on the wall just behind Suburban Dad's head. She feels floaty, suddenly, even more so than before.

"I don't get breaks most days," she answers instead, grinding down all the fear in her chest and boxing it away. Not here. Not now. She won't give anybody the satisfaction of seeing her afraid.

The suit's eyebrows twitch, the closest he gets to displaying surprise.

"Don't you work nine hour shifts?"

She shrugs.

"After work-"

"-I gotta go take care of table three," she finishes for him, ignoring the rest of whatever offer was going to come out of his mouth. "They need some refills, don't worry about it."

Ana dredges up a smile to slap on her face, inclining her head as a nonverbal 'excuse me', and starts walking away from his booth, her shoes squeaking on the tile the tiniest bit. She only comes back to give him his bill, which he pockets after he pays for his meal, walking out without any further conversation, the dove grey of his pristine suit burning itself into her eyes the same way those scratches did. They are similar, just mundane, random little subjects that caught her eye, seemingly of no importance of all.

Why then, does it feel like she's missing something?

Ana can't shake the feeling of being watched the rest of the day. That tingle on her shoulders, the feeling like something is on her skin. Even when the man in the suit leaves, she feels it lingering, and it makes her check everything. It's a normal, it's been normal save for the conversation she had, but she can't shake the sensation she's being stalked.

So when she clocks off, escaping through the backdoor, she's really unsurprised to see Victor out of the shadows like some harbinger of doom.

"Really?" she says, because at this point it's all she's got left. A tired, defeated callout in a grimy alleyway, next to a dumpster that smells of old grease and cardboard.

"Girly," he greets.

Neither of them say anything for a moment. Ana could call him out for being a creep, could do a lot of things actually.

She's not gonna. She knows better.

He prowls closer, exuding menace like some sort of noxious gas. Maybe it's one of his mutations. It would fit with the whole theme he has going.

"Do you know who that was?" he demands of her.

Ana looks at him straight in the face. There is so many people he could be talking about, but she knows who he means. Victor and him are the two new anomalies in her life, the people who started making everything unsteady again.

"No," she answers truthfully. "He's just some guy Mac saved from being mugged, and ended up coming here. It's been like this for months. Don't even know his name."

He encroaches on her personal space further. She wants to shy away, to back up, but there's nowhere to run. She has to accept this, has to stay calm, even as his fingers come up to grip her chin. He's got a hold like a vice, and his hand smells like sweaty meat. She hates being touched by most people, but this is a special kind of fucked up.

"You sure?" He asks, and his pointed nails bite into the soft flesh of her cheek as he drags her closer. She can feel the hot wash of his breath on her face, and it's a disgusting sensation. She wants him to go away, to leave, to just die. She would kill him herself if she could.

"Absolutely," Ana replies without hesitation.

He stares at her like he can pluck the truth from her eyes. Or maybe just the general vicinity of her face. His nostrils flare one, twice, and that's it. It's over. He releases his hold on her, leaving Ana with with the quiet desire to figure out a way to pay him back for the last thirty hours. It's a spark of light in the empty acceptance she feels, a rage that is just beginning to sprout.

One that quickly dies out, because she knows she can't fight him and win. There isn't a use trying. She's been living on borrowed time anyway, always playing that numbers game, and this time her cards were shit. She's tired, and she's not Mac. She can't fight this.

"Get your bags. You and your friend picked up a spook."

"What?" Ana asks, composing herself. She wanted to run earlier, yes, but the point was to leave this guy behind, not have them...she doesn't know. Is this a hostage situation of some sort? A round about kidnapping, maybe? "Really? You, now this?"

"Some kind of luck you have," he responds gruffly.

"It's 'cause fucking Mac is Irish," she states emptily.

The man in front of her snorts loud enough it echoes off the dirty alleyway walls.

 _What an asshole_ , Ana thinks.


	5. Chapter 5

"This is why we can't have nice things."

Mac, surly, running on near two days with as many hours of sleep, doesn't reply immediately. Instead, she slaps a shirt down, then a pair of pants folded in half lengthwise over it, a pair of underwear over that, and then slides a pair of socks on top. She roll them all up, and then loops the sock ends over the bundle to keep it tight and dry, forming a clothes log. Angrily, she throws the log with all the other ones, and sets out to make another.

"How was I supposed to know the Suburban Dad was a spook? Huh?" she demands, because yes. Apparently Mac's penchant for doing good deeds is actually a terrible habit that she is stopping. Right now. As of this moment, if anyone needs her help, they can fuck right off. It's totally that easy because she said so.

"You couldn't. That's why you never do anything above the call of duty. Because sometimes the people you help are apparently agents of something larger, and sometimes they are just plain old assholes," Ana replies smartly, already having finished packing her clothes and moving on to other things. Mac sees lighters, aluminum foil, strikers, shitty coffee creamer, and an old skinning knife that has been buried in her closet for as long as they have been here. It's nostalgic, that knife, with it's charming rusted out hilt.

"You two have done this before," comments Victor from the doorway, where he's overseeing the whole production with an ominous, intimidating sort of air. Then again, Victor is always threatening. He was before they started speaking, before that even , when he was nothing more than a creepy neighbor.

Mac yearns for those days now. Those forty some hours ago when her heart wasn't beating a thousand miles a minute, stuck firmly in her craw.

"Victor, I fully acknowledge that you could probably rip us apart like an old rag, but as the guy who is coercing us to leave our own home with almost no reason, who has been harassing us almost constantly since we-"

"-Don't group me in with this, you wanted to bring him back-"

"-since I decided to try and be a decent person, please understand I am barely holding myself back from a second attempt at combat with the intention of fleeing as soon as an opportunity presents itself," Mac spits angrily, terrified of the man.

Victor bares his teeth more than he smiles, and she feels the bruise on her face from the earlier attempt throb as if to accent his unspoken words. It's like he's daring her to try again while simultaneously reminding her how easy it had been to swat her away like an annoying mosquito the first time.

She was on the floor before she could even process what was happening, at least five feet from where she had been standing. Frankly, she's surprised her cheekbone isn't fragmented into dust underneath her skin. Her back molar might be loose as all fuck, but at least her jaw isn't too swollen, nor does it have that grinding, shooting ache that indicates a break.

"Mac, let it happen," Ana advises in a dead voice. It kills her to hear that tone from Ana. It means she's giving up already, accepting her fate, and likely in Ana's head, her own death as well. She's just going through the motions now, waiting to die. As if they never made it to Hunt's Point in the first place, as if they weren't progressing.

Mac snarls, slamming a clothing roll into one of the backpacks Ana had buried in her closet beside that nostalgic knife. She never let it go in the first place.

"Better catch up, Mac," Victor taunts. "Girly over there is halfway done already. Makes you wonder how many times she's done this in her head."

Mac doesn't wonder though, because now she knows. Ana's been living with the same fear Mac carries in her body right now since they moved.

Ana never stopped running.

"Look at her go. She knows exactly what she's taking," he says, his eyes following the caramel woman as she crosses the room to empty their jewelery case. Mac knows it isn't for vanity, but for quick cash at a pawn shop if the need arises.

"Not the saints," Mac blurts, but even before the words fully leave her mouth, Ana is picking out the silver medallions with care, separating them from the rest.

"Wouldn't dream of it, babe," she answers blithely, and that gives Mac the hope she needs. Ana may have given up on some level, but she still cares enough to remember that. She still cares about Mac, as cold as she might be.

Victor snorts, and then Ana's face contorts as she realizes that they actually shared a genuine emotional moment.

"You know, people will come looking for us," Mac says, taking the attention away from her friend and drawing it to herself. Hell, she may even be getting Ana's attention. Just a spark of hope, a tiny flame-

"No they won't," Victor answers crushingly fast.

"You don't know-"

"You kids keep to yourselves. The only people who know you are in passing. I have been living next to you for months. Never had anybody over once, only went out dressed nice a few times."

Mac prickles, but something in her deflates. Her level of bullshitting isn't good enough, apparently.

Victor's mean eyes bore into hers, and she forces herself to meet them head on.

"Like I said, you two have done this before. Probably ran from wherever you lived with nothing but a few bucks in your pocket and packs full of camping supplies."

Mac doesn't say a word.

"Ah, don't be angry. It's easier for everyone this way," he intones, but it's not meant as a comfort. Mac has a feeling Victor does know what the meaning of comfort or compassion is. What he is doing to them is drawing the taunt out, playing with his food before he ends it. Like a big, ugly cat with a much too hairy face, and distinctly lacking cute little ears.

"Hammocks or tent?"

Mac blinks, and so does Victor.

"What?"

"Hammocks or tent?" Ana repeats.

Funnily enough, Victor doesn't look like he has an answer for that one.

"The tent is warmer and offers better shelter, but can leave imprints if there is grass or snow. Hammocks leave almost no trace, but are less viable in alternative weather. Unless there will be other accommodations…?" Ana says slowly, like he's an imbecile.

Victor's lips pull into a thin line, the tip of his elongated canines peeking over his lip like a dog about to snarl.

"I also need to know if we are going to have access to any supermarkets, stores, or retailers of any kind," Ana continues, her entire demeanor robotic in nature. Mac can only guess that she remains unbeaten by Victor because of the way she is speaking, which comes across as impersonal at best.

"Why?"

"Because as the unfortunate owners of a uterus, biology dictates we ovulate, and then menstruate," Ana extrapolates.

Mac herself is partially concerned, and partially envious. This behavior is bad, bad, bad,but it also means that Ana remains untouched. Her complete shut down gives the illusion of calm competency, a control that Mac would love about now.

"Not a problem now, if you need them I'll know," Victor says, and Mac is lost for a moment. Her lips purse, her nose scrunches up, and her brows furrow. How in the world would he-?

"Oh. Oh saints Victor, that's gross," Mac declares, working it out in her head. "This is the smelling thing isn't it?"

Ana makes a face as well, her head shrinking back on her neck, giving her some strange pseudo-double chin. It's not a flattering look, if Mac is real honest about it.

"Smelling thing?"

"Victor said he could smell fear," Mac enlightens her friend.

"Oh. That's a tragedy," Ana announces flatly, obviously coming to the same conclusion that Mac did the night before. It's in her eyes, a bright flash of understanding that shines through the muted quality they have taken on since this all began.

Mac nods her head in agreement, brightening a bit. If she can nudge anything out of Ana, just a bit-

"That's exactly what I said."

"Alright, enough," Victor interjects before they can get started. It's a shame, really, because Mac was going to start asking him about it. He obviously has heightened olfactory sense, and most likely has total sensory improvement all over. Maybe it's like a dog's? Can he inhale and exhale at the same time? He doesn't have slits on the side of his nose, so she doesn't think it quite works like that, but Mac knows a lot about dogs. There's a comparison to be made here. She can feel it in her bones.

The large man doesn't seem to agree.

( _She's panicking._ )

"Take the tent," he orders, and Mac imagines he looks just a bit uncomfortable. There's nothing in his body language that hints at such, but she wants to believe he is. She wants to feel like maybe for once they left him wrong footed instead of the other way around.

"So we're going north?" Ana asks, interrupting Mac's pettily spiteful thoughts.

If anything, his visage seems darkly impressed at Ana's question.

"Smart guess," he answers, which really isn't an answer at all. "What else you get from what was said?"

Ana shuts down, her expression going flat once more. The humor drains out of her just as quickly as it came, and she glances over at Mac for guidance. Before Mac can give her any subtle cues, however, Victor is stepping into her line of sight, breaking their eye contact.

"Don't look at her girly. You look at me," he says.

Mac can almost feel Ana shrink inside herself, and it makes her want to stab Victor, no matter how ineffective it might be. She almost had it. Ana was almost back.

"Tell me what you got. Show off a little."

There's silence, or as much silence as the city ever allows. Somewhere, some car with a shitty fuel pump bumbles down a street, and there's honking. The wind rustling the curtains, and the distant sounds of music blaring out of several peoples' windows fill Mac's ears.

"I SAID TALK!" Victor roars, and Mac can almost hear Ana stiffen can imagine her friend flinching, hating herself for it, her hands curling into fists, her chin jutting out, and her eyes glued to his forehead instead of meeting his gaze head on.

She knows this look, has seen it before.

"You had plans for us even before the drive-by," Ana says, and her voice is quivering just the slightest bit. She's trying to give a dry report with no inflection at all, but as insightful as her words may be, her tone betrays her. "You watched, noted that we were isolated, maybe even heard us through the walls. You have a history with a government of some kind, knowing a spook on sight. With your intrinsic need to dominate, and short temper that flashes into a violent rage, I'd say ground troop, maybe special force of some sort. If I had to guess, the only reason we haven't taken more damage is because you think we're funny. We make you laugh instead of lash out. "

Mac forces herself to breath out through her nose. Ana's tripping under the attention, only getting half of it, but it's the half that Mac missed. She didn't pick up on the fact that he may have had pre-existing plans before this, or the government involvement.

That's why there's two of them, though, that's why they work.

"Your behavior about this means that the government work was temporary. Your need to watch us means that you don't actually think we are as weak as we seem. Your semi-familiar social interactions with us, despite being almost a complete stranger and you disinclination towards talking, point to something deeper," Mac starts, picking up where Ana left off.

They are a team, even if they can't see each other.

Victor tilts his head a bit, like he's trying to keep eyes on both her and Ana both.

"Maybe we remind you of someone? A situation you were in once?" Ana suggest, and yes, her voice sounds steadier.

' _I'm here, I've got your back_ ,' Mac wants to shout.

"With Logan and his brat, maybe?" Mac says instead, and that's it. That's the thing that makes his spine stiffen.

It doesn't go quite as planned though, because he snarls. It's a guttural, terrible sound that makes shivers creep their way down her skin. It raises goosebumps on her arms, and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end.

"Better," he growls.

"S-shit," Ana stutters, and Mac echoes it inside her head.

"You two are gonna be better than Jimmy," he spits.

For some reason, Mac feels like that's gonna be a hard legacy to live up too.

* * *

The truck Victor steals on the outskirts of the city isn't exactly the roomiest of vehicles.

It's not quite old enough the be a classic, and far off on the other side of run down. The grey paint that may have shimmered with metallic flake at one time is scratched and chipping off the sides of it, and the upholstery is kind of a mess. The woolen throw over the cheap vinyl of the bench seat does little to make it any more comfortable, especially because there are three of them crammed into the cab, and Ana is jammed into the middle with Victor's hand on the gear shift between her legs with Mac squished against her side.

"Awesome," she states in the otherwise silent car.

Silently she laments being the slightest of the group, cursing the infinitely unfair bitch known as biology. She's not even the shortest -the dubious honor of that goes to Mac- and yet, somehow, she's here.

Isn't that just her life.

"I bet this belonged to some poor schmuck who worked their ass off just to afford this," Mac grumbles quietly.

Ana inclines her head in agreement with that statement. It seems rather fucked up of him to do this, especially considering the fact that everything found inside the glove box indicated that the owner was something of a family oriented person hard stripped for cash. She would bet that they are going to have a terrible day ahead of them, if they haven't already discovered the car missing.

' _I hope you had theft insurance_ ,' she thinks to herself, listening to one of the belts under the hood squeal. ' _And I hope you get to upgrade to something even better._ '

Victor drops the truck into fourth in order to get up a hill, his clawed hand coming uncomfortably close to her inner thigh. Ana leans into Mac, the quiet urge to break his nose creeping in her chest.

' _You can't win, don't be stupid,_ ' she reminds herself. ' _The universe is on his side right now_.'

The envious ache inside her chest throbs a little at the thought. Victor Creed is gifted in all the ways Ana could ever have wished. He's strong like an ox, heals quicker than anything she's ever seen, his teeth are sharp, his senses keen, and he's got the sort of presence that demands both respect and a hefty amount of fear. She can't even say he's stupid, which would have made her feel at least nominally better.

Ana glances at him from the corner of her eye.

Victor Creed doesn't have to bend and remake himself to get what he wants. He has the strength to take it, to grasp the world in his gross, meat smelling hands and squeeze until the world gives it to him.

She averts her eyes to look down at her folded hands resting on her lap, consumed by her thoughts until Mac leans a little closer, their legs resting alongside each other, shoulders set side by side.

' _I'm here,_ ' she can almost hear Mac say. ' _I see you._ '

' _Pull your shit together_ ,' she snaps inside her head. ' _Mac got you in this mess, but it's going to take the both of you to get out. You have everything you need in the bag_.'

"May we know where we are going?" Ana tries, making doubly sure to frame it as a question instead of a demand.

"Alkali Lake," Victor informs them gruffly.

Ana and Mac pause to register that statement, glancing at each other at the same time.

"Alkali lake as in a lake that is alkaline on the PH scale?" Mac asks, sounding hopeful.

"In British Columbia."

Ana tries to draw strength from somewhere inside herself, but she's pretty sure she doesn't have it in her. Canada is nice and all in theory, but British Columbia at the end of summer, at the beginning of fall? Not so good.

"Is there anything there?" Ana says carefully.

"An old base," Victor gives, sounding as if he knows much more than that but refuses to go on any further.

"Well, far be it from me to try and understand you, Victor, but I have no idea what we are going to do at a lake in flippin Canada," Mac comments dryly.

Victor turns to her, his gaze fixed. Ana can feel her entire body clench as she mentally begs him to keep his eyes on the road because they are driving. If she's gonna die, so be it, but car crashes aren't sure bets, and the thought of being maimed bugs her a lot more than a clean death.

"You two are going to show me what you're made of," he says, but there's something in his eyes that says that isn't all. Victor has other business to attend at this place.

"And if you don't like what you see?" Mac asks.

He grins, and Ana actually can't help herself when she slaps one hand on the wheel -which Victor then lets go of like the crazy fuck he is. She's driving from the middle seat while he controls both the petals and the gears, staring Mac down all the while.

She's pretty sure this is worse than drunk driving. This is just nonsensically reckless.

"You die," Victor says conversationally.

A cars honks at them, and Ana tries to switch lanes. It's a lot harder to check all the mirrors and blindspots like this then she once imagined, and she ends up leaning over Victors gross legs in order to hit the turn indicator. She's not a complete monster after all. Everyone else on the road should get a fair warning.

"You haven't run. You haven't screamed. Haven't asked for help. Hell, you even took a swing at me."

Ana's grip tightens on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. She doesn't like where this is going.

"You brats are animals," he claims, and like she's some sort of pet, Victor claps his hand down on Ana's head in a gross mockery of a pet.

"Hate to tell you this, but we are, in fact, people," Mac returns heatedly. But there is fear in her voice, the same fear Ana can feel coursing beneath the shell of numbness that has overtaken her.

"Nah, I see it, kid. You will too."

"Hey, this is rad and all," Ana says with a false calm, trying to focus. "But animals, people, or whatever else is in between, me and Mac don't have super healing if this car crashes."

Victor mashes his hand down a little harder on her head, and she can feel his ragged nails scrape against her scalp.

"If me and Ana are animals, what does that make you?" Mac demands.

"The animal that can kill you," he says. There's no humor in his voice, no joke. It's just a cold statement of fact.

Mac must look away first, because Victor shifts, his hand leaving her head and returning to the wheel. For a moment, Ana doesn't -can't- move.

"Get back, girly," he orders.

Ana obeys, for now.


	6. Chapter 6

Ana falls asleep on Mac somewhere between a quaint little gas station in Pennsylvania, and the absolute saddest rest stop in all of Ohio.

Mac can feel the need to sleep herself, the last three days weighing heavy on her shoulders, and her eyelids. It's been an eventful time, and all of it is finally catching up with her. Not even her burning hot rage can keep her awake much longer.

She blinks, feeling that grittiness along her lash line and the constant strain of even looking out the window has her drained. The truck rumbles along the I-80 west, and the scenery passing them by blurs into one long stream of color. She's struck by the memory of the game she played inside her dad's truck when she was a kid, imagining a cartoon dog running side by side with the vehicle. It wasn't always the same breed, a gangly bloodhound one day, an angry terrier the next, but it was a source of amusement in the otherwise boring truck cab, set to the tune of rock music from two decades ago.

Three, nowadays.

Her gaze turns to Victor, who seems to be fit as a fiddle despite having slept just as little, if not less than, the two women. There are no bags under his eyes, no sunkenness to his skin. He's still the same bastard, with a scruffy face and hair in need of a combing.

She knows if she looks in the rearview mirror, what she will see reflected will tell a much different tale. Something along the lines of 'Angry woman has not bathed in three days, chip stains on pants, smells like fast food.'

Ana shifts uneasily against her, clutching Mac's jacket tighter around her shoulders. Her hair is an absolute mess, and Mac can already see the emergence of stress lines around her brows, which are furrowed even in sleep. She smacks her lips, and Mac has the sudden, brief thought that if Ana drools on her, she's just gonna have to live with the stain because Mac doesn't have a washing machine anymore. She doesn't have her apartment, or her bed, or her home or her tv or-

Mac sucks in a breath.

' _Steady_ ,' she reminds herself, and she shifts just enough so that Ana's head falls into a position that will allow her to wake up without a sore neck, then reaches into her pocket to palm the St. Christopher medallion within. It gives her something calming and familiar to focus on, her thumb running down the metal of the pendant's back, worn smooth by the number of times she has done this.

It ain't her first rodeo, ain't the first time she's seen a dickhead who's stronger than her, but Mac is made of iron nails, the kind that remain deep in the earth after a barn is crumpled and gone. She's as solid as a stone in a field, and no plough can un-move her.

 _Ugh_. She's getting weirdly hick as the time rolls by. That's something her grandad would have said. Seriously, what the fuck.

"She takes orders well."

The sudden bout of speech after such a long silence almost startles her. Mac looks over to Victor, who isn't looking back at her for once. She blinks, bleary eyed and tired, and for a moment she finds it weird that Victor looks so unruffled a normal. Scraggly and mean, yes, but unflappable. Maybe this isn't his first rodeo either.

"You should learn from that."

"Fuck you," Mac returns, although it's quieter than she can usually muster. It's unsurprisingly terrible of him, but she's reached her capacity for finding Victor distasteful. Or at least, she thinks she has. She hopes he won't go out of his way to make her create a whole new level of shit-tier just for him.

"You got fight, though. That's fun," he rumbles. She hates that his voice makes her think of dirt roads and crunching gravel, smooth in a way, but not suave. Those noises are supposed to be soothing, to be calm. They aren't meant to make her wary. He's ruining her memories and she doesn't even think he's trying. The douche skill on this guy is frankly amazing.

"I hope your dick gets caught in your zipper next time you take a piss."

He laughs, but it's quiet. She can't tell if that's because the somber state of the cabin affects him, he's actually starting to get tired like she thought before, or he just doesn't want to wake Ana.

Considering the type of person he is, it's probably that second thing.

"Three days is a good amount of stamina for a non mutie. You trying for four just to maintain your place on top?" He asks in that lilting drawl of his.

"Were you born an antagonist ass, or was it circumstance? Asking for a friend."

"Kid, the only friend you got is asleep on your shoulder with a skinning knife strapped to her, but no guts to use it," Victor responds, staring at the road ahead of them.

Mac rolls her eyes and brushes her hand through Ana's hair. She's not Mac's only friend. It's just more proof that Victor thinks he knows more than he does. He's so obvious about it, gunning for Ana because he thinks she's the weaker link.

"You think sitting right next to you is close enough to impale you through the eye?" she asks after a moment.

Victor goes quiet for a moment, obvious trying to figure out why those words seem so familiar. She can see the gears turning in his head to the first night they spent in the apartment, and the question Ana asked when they woke her up.

Good.

She allows herself to drift for a second, lulled by the hum of the old engine and the soft vibrations of the frame. She rests her forehead against the window, enjoying the startling contrast of cold glass on her warm skin. The trees through the window blur by, violent shades of yellows and reds like sweeping flames, interspersed with bright flashes of green the same shade of cleaning borax when it catches on fire.

"You wanna make us into animals, Victor, but we're people. In my experience, that's a much more dangerous thing. Me? I'm not even gonna pretend to give in. Ana might. She obeys you, and she will surprise you," Mac murmurs, sliding her eyes over to him. He seems to be caught in thought now, not as amused as he was before. Mac takes a vicious satisfaction in that, still feeling the bruise on her face throb in time with her heart. She almost wants to wake Ana so she can see the change, but she won't. Ana needs her rest.

"Me and Ana will find a way, king of the jungle," she assures him. They always have. Sometimes it takes a little while, but they have always gotten through.

That wrathful thing twists inside her chest. She wishes -just for a moment- she was like him. That she had the power in her body to smite him as surely as the God struck down Herod, his body laid to rot and consumed by worms.

' _That's not me_ ' she thinks, startled by the darkness of her thoughts. Mac isn't like that. She doesn't want to, she dislikes-

"I like you two more and more," the large man says after a long moment, his voice rough.

There's a promise in that tone, but for what, Mac can't tell. She knows whatever it is, they can fight it. There's always hope.

* * *

After days squished inside a car between an unstoppable force and a very reluctant to move object, Ana can barely contain herself when they get a hotel room for their final night before they ditch the car.

It's been three days of alternating sleep shifts, oppressively high running emotions, and the food she could scrounge from the apartment, because Victor is a fat dick who refused to stop for anything other than gas and sometimes the bathroom. Six days in all and most cases would stop after the first forty-eight, if anyone looked at all.

Ana looks to Mac, who stands next to her. She looks worn out, pale skin sallow, her bloodshot eyes decorated with dark bags and a barely yellowing bruise on one side. Her rage is probably the only thing fueling her at this point, maybe partnered with her paranoia. The paranoia that would have been useless had her actions not brought this whole situation to life. Still, Mac is her Mac, and she-

"Look at me girly," Victor orders, and Ana fixes her gaze to him, her back going ramrod straight. He smiles, pleased, and Ana hates the feeling of relief that takes hold.

"Your friend is dead on her feet. I get the room key, you watch out," he commands, and she narrows her eyes at him. He stares her down, and it's no contest, she loses focus fast, staring at the bridge of his nose instead of his eyes, letting that comforting blanket of emptiness wash over her.

"What, not even an insult for me?"

She stares straight ahead but doesn't answer. It's a trap; she knows it is. She knows exactly the kind of stinking, domineering asshat that Victor is. He just has more power than she's used to, but still, if she had the chance in the car, she could have ended him. Maybe. There's a risk he could have healed, but would his brain retained the information? The memories and-

Shit, she doesn't know.

The door creaks loud enough to wake the damn dead, and Ana watches him Victor go towards the main office with a sort of casual aplomb, wondering which of the rooms will be theirs. At this point, she doesn't even care if she has to take the floor. Anything is better than the cramped bench seat of the truck.

"We could run," Mac states, anger in her eyes as she watches his broad back get further and further away.

"We wouldn't get far. You need sleep," Ana reminds her.

Mac turns her eyes onto Ana, her coppery chestnut hair haloed by the off orange light of the street lamp hanging above the truck. Outside the darkness is already beginning to settle in, the sky turning into a scenic watercolor. Violet, navy, and smoky grays mix with the fading light of day, and she's struck by the quiet, and how picturesque her friend looks. For a moment she feels like they are sixteen again, running amok in abandoned school houses and old feedlots, doing anything they can to just not go home.

It's a strange feeling that gathers in her chest among this study of colors and situations. Ana wonders if Mac ever felt this way looking at her when they first started. She doesn't have the striking palette Mac does, but she must have looked just as tired at one time, just as ragged.

( _There once was a hunter and an alligator- but that's a Chocktaw legend, not Seminole_.)

"Ana, I'm sorry I got us into this mess," Mac says, her voice a rough whisper that cuts through Ana's thoughts like a knife.

"Anam Cara," Ana blurts, the first thing coming to mind tumbling past her lips. The gaelic clumsy on her tongue. It's not her language, not one either of them knows entirely, but the concept is there.

Mac smiles at her, nudging her shoulder with her own. It's a kind, friendly gesture, one that sparks rumbling inside Ana's gut.

"Anam Cara," Mac repeats.

The snapping joy in her gut moves to her chest, sated and familiar. Anam Cara Mac called her, and Anam Cara it has been for years. A relationship that cuts across convention, where both parties have seen the innermost workings of each other. The good, the bad, the downright disgusting, and still somehow accepted one another.

Mac once released whole jar of junebugs in her room, and Ana may have at one point flipped a water moccasin into her kayak. If they weren't soul friends, they would have been murderer and victim.

Speaking of murder...

"I'm still withholding the right to whoop your ass when the chance comes up," Ana states, just to make sure Mac knows that she's not letting this one go. Also to ruin the moment, which is uncomfortably fond and loving.

Mac snorts inelegantly, shoving her a little harder. Ana, not expecting the action, goes sprawling into the driver's seat and knocks her leg against the gear shift hard enough to seriously sting. She cocks her head around to cast a dirty look at Mac, whose expression of startlement quickly morphs into smugness.

"Gonna wait a long time for that," she says condescendingly.

Ana picks herself back up, leaning over towards Mac with her arms outstretched. Mac swats them away, a weary grin growing on her face. The thing living inside Ana's chest rumbles in delight to see it after so much time without it. Mac can still smile, she is still strong, and they can still be happy.

"Oh? What's this? You need help sleeping my friend? Let me place my arms around your neck," Ana jeers, a smile growing on her face.

"Fucking dork," Mac scolds, grasping Ana's hands in hers and pushing against them. Her strength is greater than Ana's own, but the dark haired woman throws her body weight into play, pinning Mac against the truck door. The frame creaks warningly, but it has been doing that this whole time. No surprise there.

"Best medicine in the world for sleeplessness is a chokehold," Ana returns.

"Oh? Maybe you should take some. Looking pretty worn out," Mac fires.

Mac pushes hard with her arms, and Ana locks her fingers around Mac's, placing her feet on the seat for better purchase. She shoves Mac against the door as hard as she can, hoping to pin her, but Mac bucks. Ana jerks upward, banging the back of her head on the metal ceiling of the cab, and she may or may not knee her flatmate into the car window in retaliation.

"Ana, for fucks-"

"Shhh, shh, sleep you whore-"

The car door rips open, and Mac and Ana manage to curse simultaneously as Mac slips backward, dragging Ana with her as they tumble out of the car onto the asphalt. Mac takes the brunt of the fall, her head knocking against the hard, cold ground, and Ana slams on top of her with all the grace of a limbless deer. Which is to say, none.

"Shit," she hisses, her eyes watering. A pair of thick boots and denim clad legs come into view, along with the hem of a black trench coat.

"I thought you were fucking."

Victor's voice cause any cheer she felt to shrivel up and hide itself in the corners of her heart. It's a remarkable phenomenon, actually. It's like his voice is the anti-innocent joy, and any joy she may have felt having a half-assed, incredibly tired wrestling match with her friend just disappears when she hears it.

"You mean your creepy nose couldn't have smelled that?" Mac asks snidely, her hands gingerly picking their way through her short hair, feeling for anything out of place.

Something heavy slams down on Ana's back, followed by another equally heavy object. The air rushes out of her lungs, and she wheezes, scrabbling around to see what he threw on them. The objects turn out to be their backpacks, which is surprising because she didn't even notice him take them from the truck bed.

"It would have," Victor says coolly. "But the truck was rocking, and the windows were fogged. I didn't think to check."

"Your mistake," Mac declares, her voice warbling oddly as Ana rolls off of her, picking up their bags and standing in one smooth motion.

"Piss poor job at keeping watch, girly," Victor reprimands, and she can feel his eyes prickle on her skin, even if she isn't looking him in the face.

"That's true. You could have been a killer or something," she agrees calmly, shouldering the bags.

For a moment he doesn't seem to get it, but he snorts after a second and claps her on the back so hard she stumbles forward a bit, her shins bumping into Mac's side as her friend gets to her feet.

"Take a shower and sleep. It will be your last for a while. Tomorrow we hike, and after that, you two are going to have to impress me."

He says it in such a warm, friendly manner it throws her for a loop. In fact, she could not think of a tone that less suits those words. Scratch that; she can think of one, but the moment she hears a bubblegum cute shoujo voice come out of Victor's throat she's leaving and never returning. The world can do a lot to Ana, but that's where she's drawing her line in the sand.

"God damn asshole," mumbles Mac, wobbling to her feet. She's unsteady as hell, but that might be because they have been sitting in that car for hours now.

"I know, right?" Ana agrees, shuffling a bag a little higher on her shoulder. She watches him go for a moment longer, enjoying the last remnants of relative peace they may have.

"I have got to pee like you would not believe, Ana."

Ana looks up to the twilight sky, which is more navy and black than anything else at this point. A spattering of silver starlight makes its way across the heavens, and she remembers that not too long ago she was mourning the lack of them in the city. The smell of the exhaust-free air, the quiet songs of crickets, the stars, and the rustling of the tree leaves on the light breeze all make her seem weirdly at home. The fact that there's a weird, potentially violent third member actually doesn't ruin that feeling either.

Throw in some booze and she might actually start to get uncomfortably familiar.

"Same," she returns flatly.


	7. Chapter 7

The scenery turns breathtaking when they ditch the asphalt and hike a few miles into the woods.

The trees are a scenic mixture of deciduous and evergreen, meaning there is a stunning contrast of emerald needles, and lighter yellows-reds from the shedding foliage. The air is so clean that every inhale is healing her from the exhaust-laden docks she worked in, and the temperature is just cool enough to wick the sweat from her brow without nipping her nose. Rich earthy smells permeate the air as well, from the spicy scent of sap, to the familiar scent of crisp leaves that are begging to be crunched underfoot. The mountains surrounding them are stunning, just waiting to be the muse of some burgeoning artist, and the sky is the kind of blue that only seems to exist on clear, early fall days.

"I'm sorry, what?" Mac asks, voice shrill enough to scare up a flock of birds. They flutter away with the sound of protesting cries and heavy wing flaps.

"Watch the tone," Victor growls, carrying absolutely nothing on him. Well, he could be carrying something in his diva jacket that she can't see, but there is no pack on his back, which really kinda pisses her off. Everything about the man pisses her off, especially now that she has a couple hours of actual sleep and real food in her

The beds and the halfway decent dinner should have been a tip-off, but she thought that maybe he was actually coming to the understanding that real people need food and sleep. She understands now that Victor was fattening them up and making sure they were good sport for the morning hunt.

Literally.

"Seriously, Victor. The Most Dangerous Game came out in like nineteen twenty-something. It's not original anymore. There's no more speak easies, and your aren't actually that old, so try-"

"Older."

Mac stops, her brows furrowing as she works that statement out.

"Shit, really?" Ana asks deadpan. Her dark eyes actually have hints of color in this lighting, spots of deep mahogany shining through. They make her seem more lively than she has been, even if her body and voice haven't quite gotten the memo.

"I worked on the railroad that runs through here," Victor informs them calmly, and Mac's mind whirls at the implications of that statement. If she remembers correctly, the Canadian Pacific Railway was built sometime in the eighteen eighties, which is roughly a hundred and twenty-ish years ago. Considering he'd have to look old enough to actually work the lines, he'd have to be at least an adolescent. Which means the huge asshole with the old timey sexism and assholeishness may have come by it honestly.

Mac glances at the man. He doesn't look older than his late twenties, early thirties maybe. Considering he's over a century old, she's kinda pissed. Stress has given her early crows feet already.

The man she's examining seems pleased, his face relaxed. The aspect of the little trial he has set up for them, some amalgamation of Richard Connell's novel and a field training exercise developed by the world most sadistic commanding officer, must ease some of the tension he has about...well, Mac has no idea why he's tense. He just seems calmer here, in the asscrack of nowhere.

Maybe the terrible evil in him is only at peace when he's in the woods, testing complete strangers on a whim.

The directions are simple at least. Survive, and if possible, try and incapacitate Victor before he incapacitates them.

No. He literally said that. Well, not incapacitate. His exact words were 'Go ahead and try and stop me, but if your aren't good enough, I'll kill you.'

Or something like that anyway. She's taken to purposefully not listening.

"Wait, you are a mutant, right?" Mac clarifies, part of her mind still stuck on his age.

Victor gives her a menacing look that calls her intelligence into question. She doesn't care for it one bit, because at this point Victor is so stuffed full of can't-kill-me powers he should fucking call himself an immortal demi-god and hang up the mutant title. Let the people who have scales instead of skin and levitation powers have their pride. His shit is next level.

"How was the Yukon gold rush?" she asks curiously. She may hate him with all the fury her five foot five body can produce, but she is also not about to throw away first-hand accounts of life in the past. History Majors would wet themselves for this kind of chance.

Well. Minus the hunting part. And probably the kidnapping part. And the threats and abuse part.

Maybe they wouldn't…

"Everyone either shit themselves to death or froze, if they weren't killed by somebody else or work first. Then they blamed sin and the injuns."

Mac struggles with the whole imagery of what he just said. He's not wrong, exactly, but it wasn't the detailed account she was hoping for. Also, the fact that he used such a slur. Honestly it's probably not the worst thing he's ever said even around them, but it is still a huge dick move, especially considering Ana. He really did go out of his way to create a brand new shit tier for them.

She's broken out of her musings by the sound of said friend snorting in amusement, and she looks over, concerned.

"Kidnapped by a racist Canadian mutant," Ana laughs monotonously, her eyes a little too wide. "Talking about people dying from crapping too hard over a hundred years ago, when he was apparently alive."

"Ana," Mac calls carefully, moving to brush her friends braid away from her face.

The hand that comes up to swat her palm away is not entirely unexpected, but the force is a little excessive. Mac pulls her stinging fingers back to her chest and watches as Ana's laugh tapers off into silence, and she swipes her own hand down her face, inhaling deeply.

"Ana?" Mac questions carefully.

"No. It's cool. Last week I was a waitress, today I'm getting hunted through the woods I guess," she breathes. "I'm cool. I got this."

Victor eyes her, his gaze expression mostly unamused. Mac says mostly because he looks a little eager, and suddenly the conversation in the truck comes back to her. Maybe she shouldn't have hinted at Ana's potential when pushed.

"You got this," Mac assures her quietly, and Ana gives her look that is both thankful and apologetic.

Victor clicks his tongue a couple times, and they simultaneously turn toward the noise. A fresh wash of anger runs through Mac when she sees that amused smile on his face, just realizing that the noise was not unsimilar to the one a dog clicker makes. She trained her hound with one of them once, and she bets Victor is using the same principle.

"Touching," he drawls, rolling his head hard enough that she hears his neckbones pop. "But boring."

"We could talk about how you are apparently old enough to be our great-great-grandfather, if that's more to your taste," Mac fires back.

"Or the old base of whatever organization you haven't named that's somewhere near the lake," Ana volunteers blandly. Frankly, Mac is a little surprised she even sassed back. It seems that a little food and sleep went a long way for Ana. Actually, she's almost a little too feisty.

Mac narrows her eyes, but doesn't say a word. There's something Ana isn't saying, something that she's keeping hidden from her. She's touchy today, not that many would notice. Victor might put it down to the whole hunting them thing, but Mac knows Ana.

Knows that she's nervous because she's planning something.

"How about you two start running farther into the wilderness, or you die an hour into a trip that could have gone days."

Mac scowls, an acerbic remark about how they have been jammed into the car for actual days lodged into her throat, but shifts on her feets to start jogging. She doesn't know how long of a head start they may have, but she is going to utilize the time as best as possible.

It takes her a moment to register the fact that she can't hear any footsteps echoing her own, and when she turns around Ana is just standing there, staring at Victor like she's seriously contemplating quitting here.

"ANA!"

Ana must roll her eyes because Victor snorts in amusement at whatever she is doing. All Mac can see is the back of her friends head.

"Alright, we'll drag it out," Ana huffs, pivoting around and walking her way towards Mac.

"Jog, Ana!"

"For shit's sake," Ana curses softly, picking up the pace. Mac can already see what Ana's argument is before she even says it.

"Yah, okay, it's been a while. It's going to suck," Mac agrees.

"If we have to stop jogging a hundred meters away because we're out of shape, and Victor sees, I am going to offer you to him on a platter," Ana murmurs under her breath as she passes Mac by, begging to weave through the trees. The trees that Mac had planned on covering them if that exact thing were to theoretically take place.

It turns out to be a moot point anyway because Victor starts laughing in a way that manages to convey that yes, he totally heard them.

"Fucking hate you," Ana breathes, adjusting the straps on her bag to cinch tighter around her waist and shoulder. Her eyes are already narrowed in the expectation of what lies ahead, scrunching up the lines of her face.

"Hate me when we get out of hearing range of the super sensory douche," Mac pants, already feeling the pull on her calves. It has been far, far too long since they even went on a mock hike, let alone a real one.

She tries to have faith in Ana, because if whatever she's planning doesn't work out, they're fucked.

* * *

"A fire?" Mac asks her, sweat dripping down the side of her face. Her pale cheeks are flushed from exertion, and her breathing is heavy as well. They both have managed to push past the first awful hump of effort into the runner's high that they are desperately trying to keep alive.

The average person can walk about thirty-six miles an hour on flat, even terrain over the course of twelve hours with a full water supply and a good night's sleep. It can go down to around eighteen if the terrain gets rough, or the person has hindrances.

Ana would say they have maybe made it six on top of the six they did before. The fault lies in equal parts bad starting condition, steep terrain, heavy packs, and trying to cover their trail as best as possible with what they have. It's not good timing, especially considering that Victor never said how much of a head start he was going to give them.

This hunt is rigged-

"A really, really big fire," Ana responds flatly.

-but it might still work.

She's thought it from every angle she could. There's likely nobody after them, nothing they can do to outrun Victor, let alone kill him, and they don't have anything but camping gear they haven't used for years. At this point, the iodine tablets are probably out of date and any food they might eat has to be gathered by hand. In her opinion they were fucked before Victor even announced her would be playing tiger to their goat.

"How big of a fire?" Mac asks, trying to see Ana's point of view. It's always comforting to know that Mac at least makes the effort.

"Ideally?" Ana says. "The entire forest."

Mac gives her a long, lingering once-over, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She seems to mull it over in her mind a bit, and to her delight, she can see her partner working the details out without Ana even having to speak.

A big enough fire has several advantages. For one, if it really gets going, then it draws people to the area. Nobody gives a shit about two kidnapped women, but a whole lot of people care about a wildfire eating up habitat and property. Hell, if there is a mysterious base near the lake, it might even piss off the organization that Victor won't name because all of their shit will be either on - or surrounded by- fire. For two, Victor has the senses of a bloodhound with hawk eyes on a gorilla's body, or something. Which means that nitty gritty smoke and hot, hot flames should fuck him up double time, covering their trail better than slogging through a trickling creek ever could. Three, Ana is mildly cold and upset, and she really, really wants to start a fire.

Eagerly, knowing it's the best chance they have, she awaits Mac's approval.

"Is that what the aluminum foil you packed was for? Just in case he took the lighters and strikers?" She asks after a long, long moment.

"Actually, it was for really shitty thermite," Ana admits. It's also what the rusty trinkets and coffee powder were for. She didn't suspect the shitty rust on her knife would work right, nor did she think the could get the aluminum small enough for anything good. The magnesium strikers aren't exactly ideal either.

Chemical reactions are fairly forgiving, but there are some things that can't be skewed. It won't be thermite, but she has more than enough in her pack to start an incredible inferno, especially with all the dried leaves and underbrush.

"Ana, I thought you were gonna stab him in the eye in the car to be honest," Mac admits after a long moment, looking a bit morose. "I thought you had given up, and I was waiting for him to push you-"

"I did give up Mac," she interrupts before her friend can get started with the whole gross guilt thing.

"But-"

"I gave up, but you didn't. Your gross hero complex meant you couldn't leave me. So now I'm starting a bigass fire in the middle of the Canadian wilderness not to save my myself, but to save your dumb ass," Ana says, unbuckling the strap around her stomach. Immediately she can feel the increased weight of the rucksack on her shoulders, and she grunts at how heavy it seems. This is light gear, too. This should be easy.

Man, they really let themselves get out of shape.

"Ana," Mac says slowly in a manner that lets Ana know that she is both deeply touched and also very worried. "How bad have you been depersonalizing everything?"

"As hard as I possibly can," Ana admits freely, not feeling a damn thing but numbness.

Mac sucks in a sharp breath, letting it out in one long steady blow.

"I'll kill him," Mac says softly, and Ana's lips quirk upward in what could have been a smile in any other situation. Mac kill someone. What a joke.

"Is that a yes to the fire?" she asks curiously.

"Will it make you happy?" Mca asks her in return.

Ana can't really say that it will make her happy. However, she can say that it might make her feel something other than nausea inducing terror and headache causing stress. She hasn't started crying yet, but the moment she gets to be alone where she knows for a fact Victor can't hear and Mac can't see, it's gonna be a gross, half laughing, half sobbing flood.

Or she can do it the old fashioned way and drink until the world turns glassy. She would stab some in the neck for some gin right now.

"Maybe," she hedges truthfully.

"Then savor the moment Ana, because I would like you to start a forest fire."

So Ana does savor the moment. Just for a second she breathes in the clean mountain air, sucking in a lungful of smoke-free oxygen. The breeze is soft against her skin, and she thinks it will work wonderfully to fan the flames once she gets them high enough. Not only that, but Mac is agreeing with her, which means she had a genuinely good idea with the fire thing, and it wasn't her justifying and impulse.

"Awesome," she breathes.

Then she sets to work, slinging the bag off her shoulders and digging through it for everything she has stashed away.

The key to a good fire is three things. Heat, oxygen, and fuel. The key to a really, really big fire in a short amount of time in a somewhat cool environment with thinner air is actually a great incendiary device. Since Ana does not have one of those ready made, she has to cobble something together that may sort of kinda work.

A dust explosion, while admittedly really cool, isn't going to cause a lasting fire, so the coffee creamer -a high energy, low oxidizing combustible- can probably be used to make generate a lot of heat. The aluminum foil she planned to grind up...well, she still might, just in case she wants to throw aluminum powder around and fuck up everyone's sight. The lighters she can use to her benefit in various ways, and though she is loathe to do so, the limited tampons they have will make great fire starters. She wanted more than just one box, but Victor ruined that idea a while ago. Which leaves her with a magnesium striker to get started with.

"Tinder and logs," Ana asks, already clearing a space out for the first fire. If she can get a campfire big enough to engulf the underbrush, maybe even get the flames to the canopy, the wind should take care of the rest.

"Already on it," Mac says, still within line of sight. Her own bag is open as well, and she lobs a clothing roll at Ana. The taller woman catches it easily, but the trust in the action is huge. She is willingly sacrificing her clothes for this noble cause.

Ana looks her straight in the eye as she undoes the sock tipped ends of the roll.

"I love you," she says earnestly.

"Tell me that when you are aren't exhausted and about to commit an international crime," Mac drawls.


	8. Chapter 8

"Shit shit shit shit-"

It turns out that intentionally starting a forest fire is significantly harder than doing it on accident.

It starts basic enough, a tiny campfire that Ana manages to breathe life into in the most literal way, blowing on what small embers she has to increase the heat and get the tinder started. They nurse it along as the sun begins to set, and that little campfire becomes something of an incredible bonfire that will last the whole night if they should so want.

That is not what they want, though, and so a burning branch from the bonfire lights two other campfires, which then become bonfires, which then become Mac and Ana carrying t-shirt torches as the wind feeds the flames and eats itself through the trees to become a small wildfire. Then that spirals into even more fires as Ana takes her flambeau and sets anything that catches her eye ablaze, ostensibly to 'keep their path lit in the night.'

By early morning, with the aid of the wind and Ana's growing zest, it becomes a blaze that threatens hundreds of acres and both their lives.

It's been maybe eighteen hours since Victor left them, and Mac really couldn't tell you what her life is anymore.

She glances over at Ana as they scramble over a ridge, backpacks still hefted high on their shoulders. Her high cheekbones are smudged with soot, and her black hair is a fright to behold, frizzing out of its braid and scorched in some places, but her eyes are wide, her pupils dilated in excitement. She's most definitely not depersonalizing or disassociating now, panting through her dry lips.

That means Mac did something right, at least. She can also say that she hasn't seen hide nor hair of Victor since they left him, so allowing Ana to spark this tinderbox up was probably a fantastic idea.

It was also a horrible one.

The smoke is the worst part. Not enough to damage her lungs, hopefully, but enough that every time the wind shifts Mac is overtaken by racking coughs that leave her breathless and dizzy. She's forced to use another one of her t-shirts as a makeshift respirator, tying the sleeves behind her head so it sits on the bridge of her nose. The protection does not extend to her eyes, which burn and sting, tears pulled unwillingly down her cheeks to soak the cloth in places.

The heat, for the most part, isn't an issue at this distance. The inferno isn't quite as fast as they are yet, but that's likely to change at any time, and the couple hundred yards they have on it will mean nothing if the wind changes direction.

The debris on the other hand…

Ash, embers, and soot drift around them like demonic fireflies. The particles get caught in invisible currents, drifting like snowflakes in the breeze, and Mac knows that these too can spark their own blazes. For now, they clog up the air, giving the whole landscape an apocalyptic vibe.

It's awful.

It feels kinda right.

Maybe it's the sleep deprivation talking. Maybe it's the lack of water. Maybe it's the long-term impact of running on fear and anger, not eating in the last twenty-four hours, the lack of oxygen making its way to her brain, or maybe she's losing her mind right alongside Ana, but it's not...it's not terrible. Her heart is racing a mile a minute and the world is ash and flame, burning and searing, but loping through the woods next to her partner, she kind of feels like nothing can stop her.

"Mac!" Ana croaks, standing tall and proud on the crest of the hill above them. Beat to crap, Mac has seldom seen her so energized.

"What?" Mac answers, raspy voice, muffled by the fabric over her mouth. Her friend waves her over, pointing to something on the other side of the steep slope she's mounting.

"Water, and a way out," Ana answers.

Sure enough, when Mac makes it to her side on the peak, a shining slice of lake rests at the bottom below, a dirt road cutting along its banks. The dark waters reflect the clouded sky above, a beautiful mirror of the world around them. It's like the centerpiece of a Peter Doig painting, some strange mix between awe-inspiring and forbidding.

It's what she hears that makes it, though. The sound of an old, rumbling motorcycle comes from somewhere below. She can't see it through the trees, but she can hear it faintly over the sound of the fire whooshing behind them.

"Fuck," Mac breathes.

"Fuck yeah," Ana repeats.

Mac takes a step forward, and then another step, and momentum catches up with her because she's going down a slope instead of up a ridge, and gravity is sort of a thing. Her worn, tired body stumbles once, and then she's trying to play catch up with her own feet as she starts falling. For a moment her mind jumbles, too excited to remember what to do.

But Ana catches up to her and grabs her wrist, angled nearly forty-five degrees to the surface of the earth, equal parts sliding and skipping the way down. Mac catches on quickly, twisting her arm to grab Ana's wrist in return and mimicking the move. Honestly, she couldn't care less if she fucking rolled down the hill like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka. They are very, very close to water and a vehicle. If Victor can catch them after this, he fucking deserves to keep them.

Ana is laughing, breathless and rough, but it's genuine and so real it hurts Mac's chest. Something like victory lingers in the back of her mouth, crawling out of her in the form of several loud whoops, the likes of which have not been heard since they left the Midwest. The leaves, loose stones, tree roots, and leaf litter thin out, and then there's gravel road firm beneath her shoes. Mac skids across it, the momentum of her jaunt down the slope carrying her several yards passed where she planned on stopping. She feels a tug on her arm as Ana faces the same problem, but solves it by using Mac as a steadying hand.

"Motorcycle," Ana pants, her eyes shining, the smell of smoke heavy on the wind. Her free hand is jerking a thumb down the road.

Mac follows her finger to where a man in old jeans and a pair of oddly tinted sunglasses is staring at them, mouth pulled into a tight line, brows furrowed. He looks confused as she feels, standing on an outcropping of stones that hang over the water of the lake.

"We can ask him for help," Mac decides, partially delirious and more alive than ever.

Ana's smile is a large, hungry thing; an alligator's maw on a woman's face. Yet it melts when she hears Mac, slipping at the corners. It's like she doesn't understand, and when she looks over again towards the bike, her eyes seem to skitter around before they land on the man. It's likely that Ana didn't even register his existence in the first place.

"We're pitiful hikers caught in a random wildfire," Mac instructs, trying to work it all out in her head. There a lot of holes in that story but it's the best they have right now. They don't need an airtight alibi. They need help.

Ana's face spasms strangely. Mac has the weirdest feeling she may be thinking unkind things about her.

"Hey!" the man calls, drawing Mac's attention. He looks likes he's coming over, trying to find his footing on the rocks. "Hey, you two!"

Mac waves back, watching Ana out of the corner of her eye. Her friend seems a bit confused, nervous even, but there is tension in the line of her shoulders. She's looking around, from Mac, to the bike, to the man.

"Trust me, Ana," Mac says. "Even if it's for themselves, people want to hel-"

The lake _implodes_.

Everything gets a bit weird after that. Weirder than being kidnapped even.

There's a whirlpool, the sounds of thousands of gallons of water rushing in swirling torrents wrenching through the air. It drowns out everything else, and the man on the rocks is so startled he trips, tossing himself away from the noise and rolling over the hard ground away from it. Mac freezes in place, her hand held high, t-shirt mask hanging on her face, her eyes glued to the water.

Ana - soot covered, manic Ana- startles so hard she stumbles and falls hard on the gravel.

It's something that barely registers over the rest of the noise, but Mac can see the shock shake through Ana's whole body as a blinding light fills her peripheral vision. She's aware of her friend's face staring forward, but Mac's main line of sight is taken up by a woman with red hair rising from the waters like the goddamn Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend.

There's a surreal moment where time seems to slow down. The woman looks to the man on the ground who is screaming something about jeans. Then she looks up and over at Mac, her eyes curiously colored and vividly bright. Worst of all, Mac can feel something like a slip of silk against her brain. The woman's brows furrow, confused, before slipping over to Ana. Whatever she finds there is uncertain, but the ringing silence grows. Then like a light switch being flicked everything stops and the world goes dark.

* * *

Ana becomes aware of several things at once.

The first is cool air on her skin, a gentle cold that is too contained to be the autumn breeze of Canada. It pricks at the sensitive flesh of her fingertips where the fire scorched her when she breathed it to life, and raises bumps on her skin. The bed on which she is resting is too hard to be packed earth, and too level to be stone. The fabric over her is smooth but thin, barely any barrier at all against the metal. Her mind begins to stir, and she realizes she feels rested and content, if a bit uneasy.

Then she realizes that there was a voice, rough and gravelly like Victors, but not his. Similar, though, and it's tapered off.

The next two seem to come simultaneously. She smells metal -sharp and cold- along with the sterile scent of a doctor's office and feels eyes on her body before she even opens her own.

Ana remains very, very still.

The feeling of the eyes on her remains. It's a feather-light feeling, like an insect crawling across her, light taps of unseen legs setting her nerves tingling. She wants to reach out for Mac, turn to her friend for guidance, but she doesn't know where Mac is. She doesn't even know where _she_ is.

That jolts her enough to open her eyes the tiniest bit. The fluorescent light that greets her is far too bright, and she wants to hiss, but everything inside of her is telling her to keep still, to remain unnoticed and therefore unassuming.

Her heart beat is a constant, sluggish thing that pounds in her ears as she peeks around. Thankfully, the first thing she sees is Mac laid out in a bed beside her. Her friend looks better, the bruise on her face from Victor fading from yellow to cream, the ash and soot gone from her skin. She's breathing steadily, her short hair a mess from the pillows. Behind her, what could be the guy whose motorcycle she wanted to steal (not ask for help, _Mac_ ) seems to be resting as well.

When she slides her eyes to the other side, however, what she sees isn't so comforting.

It's… well, Ana doesn't want to say Stikini, because she isn't a two-year-old being told stories of organ vomiting owl witches anymore, but if she were, the woman next to her might have been what Ana would have feared. Her gaze is certainly unblinking enough as she stares, her face angled similarly to an owl's.

Also, the guy whose arm she's holding looks pretty much fits the bill for an anthropomorphic Hvcko-Capko. Short, squat, with mutton chops that jut out like long ears. There's something gruff looking about him, and something familiar. He looks kind of like Victor, if Victor lost about two feet, dyed his hair black, and then decided his new clothing style would be mechanic beer bachelor.

Thinking of their kidnapper makes her heart sink as the memories trickle back. They are probably right where he wants them to be. Maybe they never got away in the first place. The important question is-

"Was Victor impressed?" she croaks, closing her eyes once more. Her throat is sore. Maybe it's from when she lost her shit when the Stikini woman rose from the lake like a legend of old. Maybe it's from smoke inhalation. Who knows? She probably should have stayed quiet, but they both were staring like they already knew she was awake.

Somebody shuffles around. Considering gruff guy is the only one standing, her betis on him.

"Did we pass? Or are we dead?" she asks again, barely a whisper.

"Kid, uh, look-" The rough voice from earlier begins.

"Sabertooth isn't here," cuts off the calm even voice of a woman.

That… that doesn't really register with Ana.

Something shivers in the back of Ana's head. It feels strangely probing at first, but then it's hot like the wildfire was. Things come rushing in her brain like magic, and her mind is suddenly filled with way too many things. She hears a birdsong, the rustle of wings, and tastes the name Pheonix on her tongue. Sees Victor, only he's got a stupid furry long coat on and he looks like a neanderthal, which makes Ana want to laugh at him. She understands this was who he was. She can feel his thoughts, the hunger there, the surging boredom that spurns him to crush and maim.

Then it's a scalding rush and she sees everything that happened at the lake, only it's through the Stikini's eyes. Her mind is expansive and awe-inspiring, and she can feel every mind near here. She can sense _ScottCyclopsFriendLover_ , his confusion and heartbreak. She can see into Mac's heart, the hope that lingers there, the bravery and the bewilderment in her mind. The clear acceptance and affection that binds her to Ana. The Stikini shows Ana herself in that scene, a tangled knot that Phoenix has trouble unraveling, but a surging emotion that makes it hard to focusanda _llthethoughtsbegintomeltintomemoriesandsensation_ -

-Then nothing. Nothing at all because Ana remembers exactly what she did at the lake. She went to attention, and her conscious mind ripped itself back as it always does. She let everything become distant and hazy in her thoughts. Her body was not her own, nothing was. She was not Ana, fallen back onto the ground, scraped palms bleeding on the rocks. Not really. Mac would handle it. Mac would protect them.

Pheonix shows her confusion, how she didn't -doesn't- understand. She remembers the bewilderment at the show of absolute faith, of ceding control to another. How that had been too much too soon, overloading herself and everyone else around them.

"JEAN!"

The new reality comes surging back, and Ana is left gasping for air. Her heart monitor is sounding the alarm, and there are spots in her eyes as she stares at the owl witch that isn't actually a witch owl. Those eyes stare back, and though she feels a creeping, overwhelming sense of fear, Ana understands somehow.

What really matter is this; Victor wasn't near the lake. Victor wasn't close to them at all. Mac is safe and whole, and so is Ana. Lighting all the things on fire worked. Telepathy is a thing now, and her life is fucked over. There is no more sense of privacy, and she feels violated in ways she didn't know she could be.

The world is big and grand and pretty intent on fucking her without so much as a drink first.

"Cool," she wheezes. "I'm cool. It's all cool."

"Kid-"

"Thanks, Phoenix," Ana says, ignoring him and settling down against the metal bed. She wants to be still now, just take this in. She wants to breathe while she can. They got away for now. She doesn't fool herself into thinking she's free, but they bought time, and that's good enough. She wants to savor the weirdly futuristic maybe-hospital, try and calculate the new hand that the world has dealt them. Maybe consider their new captors.

"We don't have insurance," she mumbles out after a moment because none of this can be cheap.

That startles a laugh out of the man, albeit a short, sharp one. It makes her fear him instinctively, because it reminds her of Victor, but that's not new either.

The woman is still quiet, staring at her. Ana can feel those green eyes boring into her skin, feel the brushes of a mind against her own.  
That's okay. She's not going to lie and say she's comfortable, but for now, she's too tired to really care and it's really none of her business anyway.

"Ki- you. You! Don't sleep. What happened, who are you?"

Ana doesn't answer, closing her eyes. It's a bad choice. She knows he could hurt her, that the two of them could do any number of things to her in this state. All hell could break loose at any point, but the world is still for once and she feels too numb to give a fuck.

"Hey, hey!" Snaps the man, but Ana isn't feeling it. She isn't feeling much right now. She just wants him to be quiet.

"Suck a dick," somebody murmurs. That's Mac, through and through. They must have woken her up.

Ana does her best to turn her head to the side, making eye contact with her friend. She looks about as alert as Ana feels.

"Hoe," Ana greets in a mumble.

"Miser," Mac responds instinctively.

They share wan smiles, and Mac raises her arm just high enough to flip Ana the bird.

"We made it out," Mac guesses, letting her arm fall to the side. She looks around the room and seems to notice their audience for the first time. Ana gets the distinct pleasure of watching her features morph into incredulity at Victor's alternate self and the Stikini.

"Weird hospital?" Mac asks after a second.

Ana manages to shrug.

Mac sighs, a long gust that slips steadily passed her lips. Then, almost as an afterthought, she looks at Ana.

"We don't have insurance," she says.

"Right?" Ana replies.

* * *

(Seven thousand miles away, a man with receding hair gets a message on his phone from an old contact. His agent looks at him quizzically, but he simply reads through it and smiles his same enigmatic smile.)


	9. Chapter 9

"What's it like to be this rich?" Mac wonders, looking around her.

"I don't know, but I'm scared to touch anything," Ana mumbles, her hands folded in her lap and her posture stiff.

The office they are in is roughly the same size as both the kitchen and den in the apartment they left behind, furnished with rich stained woods and the kind of furniture one sees in movie depictions, not in real life. There are books and papers spread about, but in an orderly way. Their pristine bindings and hardcovers are used, but not shredded like the worn college textbooks that Ana sometimes picks up from second-hand stores. There's no faded spots or stains anywhere, making her think that this is the kind of fancy where you use coasters and shit. It's more like a museum diorama than real to her, and the Degas painting on the wall that she's pretty certain is the genuine article adds to that.

So, yah. Mac kind of doesn't want to touch anything either. Forget about not having insurance; she feels like if she lingers too long in one place the property value will go down or something. Some haughty asshole is gonna step around the corner and ramble off about how much they owe for a being rescued from the Canadian wilderness. Next thing you know, it'll be serfdom for the both of them, a long life of working off their debts in a labor camp.

If she had ever imagined a secret boarding school for mutants hidden in New York State, this would not have been it.

"Did you see-?" Mac asks, jerking her head to the window. Ana nods almost imperceptibly.

"They're weird," she mutters, glancing in that direction as well.

The mechanic looking guy led them up from the maybe-hospital standing in the corner of the office glares at them. Mac's gonna let that slide, if only because she's a bit wary of mutants after this, and they weren't referring to the obvious mutations some of the kids outside are sporting. Well, mostly. It's not the spikes one kid is growing out of his skin that bothers her, or the little girl with oddly tinged skin. It's the fact that they all seem...what's the word?

Clean. Well mannered and sort of Disney-esque.

It's disquieting. Mac doesn't have a prerequisite for dealing with this.

Assholes, yes. Fancy ass rich people and happy kids? Not really.

Ana looks back to her, face blank. Her eyes are searching and somewhat empty, the swell of emotion that was evident in the forest muted and barely lingering. Mac tilts her head to the side the slightest bit, trying to convey that it's going to be alright. That Mac isn't angry.

Ana tilts her chin down in recognition, but her hands grasp a little too tightly where they join together in her lap, bandaged fingers pressing hard. Her own scraped up palms twinge in sympathy.

The door opens behind them, and Mac jumps a bit in her seat, her heart racing. Only after a second does she realize it was a bit of an overreaction.

"You girls have been through quite the trial," says a calming, gentle voice. Mac can literally _hear_ how cultured this guy is.

She turns to look and she sees not one, but two people stepping in. One man, bald and kind looking as he presses his wheelchair forward followed by what Mac might qualify as an actual model. Mac has seen quite a few well-formed people in her time, but the woman behind baldy is a stunner. Striking white hair and unblemished skin, paired with eyes that promise that she takes no shit leave make quite the figure.

"Then again, calling it a trial may be putting it lightly," he continues, wheeling his way to the desk. She turns back to realize that Ana is staring at him with wide eyes, the kind she usually reserves for Tony Stark's newest weapons release. A sort of awed, covetous gaze.

"Charles Xavier?" Ana asks, a bit stunned.

The man looks a bit amused.

"Yes," he answers.

"The geneticist who published a ' _The Unified Theory of Sympatric and Parapatric Evolution Within the Human Genome?_ '"

"The very same."

Ana looks a little star struck, and Mac is happy for her, but she can't just let this pass. It's an excellent opportunity. She lifts her fist to her mouth and coughs into it, barely smothering the word ' _nerd_.'

Ana shoots her a withering glance, breaking the facade for a second. Mac grins as Ana rolls her eyes.

The kindly looking man smiles indulgently at them both, and Mac hears the sound of the door closing again, then the clack of heels as the woman with cheekbones sharp enough to cut goes to stand beside mutton chop mechanic guy. It's a little disappointing that he gives her a friendly nod, but that's probably just Mac's newly gained bias against the wildman look speaking.

It's there. She knows it's there. She'll deal with it eventually.

"Now, and-"

"Mac and Ana, please," Mac interrupts, suddenly a bit wary. She didn't say anything about their last names, and a glance at Ana's stony expression tells her that she didn't either.

Xavier nods, folding his hands on top of the desk in front of him. It's something that Mac appreciates, because if she can see them then she can make sure they are empty.

"Mac and Ana then. We are aware that there may be some confusion, and that you have likely been under some distress. The APB for you two seemed to indicate that there was coercion involved in your disappearance and upon waking seemed to indicate someone-"

Mac briefly stops listening for several reasons. The first and foremost is because her ears are buzzing. Who the fuck put out a report for them? People disappear in all the fucking time in Hunt's Point. It could have been Cage, because he's kind enough to semi-care about his employees, but he would have maybe filed a police report and that's it. If anything, there would have been a Missing Persons Report and that's it. Also, the fact that he received an APB means that there is at least some tie to the law here, and that's very alarming.

There goes the idea of playing lost hikers. This complicates the shit outta things.

"-dark implications. You were found two thousand miles away, in the Canadian wilderness with nothing more than hiking packs, unconscious near two of our teaching staff. Between the two of you, there were contusions and burns, and both of you suffered from exhaustion and dehydration. Not to mention the raging wildfire not far away," Xavier continues. He says it all with that same calming smile and genial tone, the one that's too nice.

Mac swallows dryly. That's...that's a lot to take in. She doesn't even know what to say.

"This may be a stressful question to ask at the moment, and I understand if you need time, but we were wondering perhaps if you could illuminate us to what happened," says a female voice. It's rich and stable, and almost perfectly timed out like there was some nonverbal cue for her to speak Mac missed.

Mac glances at Ana, who is looking at her. She won't talk, trusting Mac to have the words.

Usually, Mac wouldn't talk. She's not a snitch. She has her pride.

But considering just what a raging dickhead Victor is, combined with the fact Ana may have already indicated him when she woke up, she feels no remorse. She has no qualms about throwing their assailant under the bus and would probably do it literally if she could.

"Victor Creed, that's who took us," she says damningly, licking her lips. "Six foot six, I'd say. Blond hair cut short, around two hundred and seventy pounds, muscular. An utter asshole."

The mutton chops guy snorts.

"I am very sorry," Xavier says softly.

Mac ignore him. The gentleness chafes a bit, unfamiliar and strange. She forces the rest out.

"He said there was another guy, someone named Logan who had a kid. He said we would be 'better than Logan and his brat', but then called the guy Jimmy? That's why he took us to Alkali Lake, because he wanted us to impress him. Said something about a base there. He wanted to hunt us, but then there was a wild fire-" _because Ana started it, can't believe that worked_ "-and we ran. Made it to the lake, saw a guy with a motorcycle, asked him for help. Then there was some lady coming out of the lake, and I guess whatever magic she was doing made me pass out, but I saw everyone there in your super secret future hospital, so I guessed it worked out alright."

The resulting silence is stifling. She's stuck wondering if maybe they don't believe them, that maybe they think they're crazy. Her heart beats like a drum in her chest, and she can feel preemptive indignant anger begin to swell. Mac is about to call them out when a snarl that sounds like Victor's fills the room.

Ana stands so fast her seat nearly topples behind her, eyes glued to the mechanic in the corner.

"Logan," The bald man states authoritatively, but he hasn't opened his mouth, and Mac is fairly certain she wasn't meant to hear that, especially not in her head. It's scarier somehow. Mac can feel the adrenaline begins to pump in her veins.

For fucks sake. Immortal wildmen, government spooks, kidnapping road trips, and now telepathy? To be fair, she does think the telepathy is the coolest thing yet, but still. She's not ready for this all at once. Maybe one or two things over a couple of months, over a couple of years would be preferable. It hasn't even been two weeks and it's being crammed down her throat all at once.

( _Can he hear her thoughts? Fuck-_ )

To his credit, the man manages to wrangle his anger in. She thinks that seeing Ana watch him like she's waiting for something awful to happen might help, but she's still pissed. She thought this was a safe place.

"Well, that's one question answered," she bites out, crossing her arms across her chest.

It raises a million others though. Questions such as how the ever living fuck are they supposed to live now that they don't have jobs because they missed so many days? Since there's been an APB, and their apartment has probably been gone through, is it still there? Actually, scratch that. They don't have jobs to pay rent so it probably doesn't even matter.

Would these people even get that? They live in a big ass mansion after all. Mac's fairly sure what Mac and Ana have now is what's in the packs and the clothes on their back. Why the fuck is the mysterious Logan here? Where the fuck do they stand on things? Are they captives instead of rescued victims?

( _What the fuck?! Whathefuckwhatthefuckwhatthe-?!_ )

"Please, everyone, calm down," Xavier intones.

Mac notices her breathing has gone fast. Her head is starting to ache from it all, pulled twenty directions at once.

She forces herself to slow it down.

"I am sorry you have endured so much," Xavier says after everyone seems to have gathered themselves, his gaze sympathetic. He looks over to Ana who stares back blankly, still standing.

"Ana," Mac says lightly. She doesn't say it's cool, but she does want Ana to know she's here.

Ana twitches awkwardly, looking over to Mac before settling back in her seat.

"This is fucked."

"Gonna second that," Huffs Logan sullenly, crossing his arms.

"Neither of you is wrong," Mac agrees.

The bald guy clears his throat, breaking up what could potentially be a fairly good skulk between the three of them. Not that Mac feels inclined to let mutton chops in on it, but they are here, they are skulking. It could have been a thing.

"I planned on offering you two sanctuary here, perhaps some time to figure things out, but I understand fully if you do not feel safe. If there is somewhere else for you two to go..."

There isn't. The way they don't answer the question probably makes that pretty obvious to everyone else in the room.

"You're just going invite us to stay here? Just like that?" Mac asks skeptically.

"Xavier's Institute is a well-known for its goodwill," The stunner in the back interjects. "You would not be the first to be in need of assistance."

Mac presses her lips together. That feels fake. This all feels very weird. They are so many reasons why this _should not be_.

They don't have tons of options though.

"What about Victor?"

The Irish woman turns to her friend who is still rigid in her seat. Her hands have gone back to squeezing each other in her lap, and her eyes are cold.

"What happens when Sabertooth shows back up for us?" she presses, and Mac wants to say that this time, they'll go with the eye impalement plan. Or maybe lava if they can swing it.

Before she can debate the merits of saying that aloud, somebody else is speaking up.

"No one is coming for you," Xavier tries to assure them. "You are safe here."

Mac and Ana don't even have to glance at each other. They both know that is a lie. Maybe it's just trauma, or maybe it's paranoia. Hell, it could even be regression into an old mindframe, but somehow Mac knows that Victor is coming.

Apparently, their unease is obvious.

"I cut his fucking head off," Logan says from the back, and Xavier makes a noise of concern at that.

Mac turns in her chair to look at him. He's got his arms crossed over his chest, staring at both Mac and Ana. She may not know the guy, but the look on his face tells her that's a promise.

Mac still doesn't trust it. She believes in the good of people, but she's just been through an ordeal that reminds her that everyone has their own motivations. Being allowed in on all this information, and promised a bit of safety on top of that?

She can't take that at face value anymore.

* * *

The one that introduces herself as Ororo takes them on something of a basic tour, and Ana has to concentrate on the little things in order to not bolt.

It helps that Mac understands this, up to the point where she manages to scrape up some spaghetti from wherever they feed the army of children, and is patient with Ana's hovering in her personal space the whole time they re-heat it and shove reimbursement where it once sat.

Her brain keeps telling her several things at once. The first and foremost is that Victor is coming and they have to impress him. She knows intellectually that the likelihood is slim and that there was a promise of protection, but Ana doesn't trust that pledge. Nobody can help them but themselves.

A subsection of this thought says that the logan they have been compared to is within grasp, and wouldn't it be impressive to Victor if they bested him here and now? Would that buy them leniency? Time? Would he even like it if it were possible to do somehow? Is this the Logan or do they now have to fight every Logan and child duo they come across? She's pretty sure they implied he was the right one, but...

The next thought Ana has is that there are mutants everywhere. Little fifteen-year-olds and tiny nine-year-olds with power beyond Ana's grasp, blessed by nature and science in a way that makes envy crawl in her throat and make a home there.

Many do not see Ana and Mac, as the group that brought them here seems fond of walking them down richly furnished corridors -yah, fucking corridor, not halls- while the children are otherwise occupied or distracted, but Ana can see the children. Ana can see them playing, learning, and developing with more care and skill than she can ever have.

The kids are so….so _odd_. So neat and nice and whole, their clothes without holes and their school dripping with luxury. Even the brooding teenagers trying to find their own place seem to care and genuinely respect the adults watching them. The petty rebellions of acting out, dying hair, talking back… these are things that are done to people the child knows it can safely express itself with. It's like a movie set, or a magazine page. It doesn't feel _real_.

Jealousy, hot and unjust, settles in her heart. What is she, compared to these people who can shove memories and thoughts into her head as easily as they can take them out? What is one average woman to a man like Victor, like Logan? How can she possibly stand up to these people when they could break her on accident, when the teenager she saw could walk through walls, and the boy could create illusions? What use is she?

The third thought is that someone posted an alert for them. An APB. She doesn't know for sure, but the only person she can think of is the spook. Suburban dad was no one to them, not really, but he was someone to Victor, part of a group that even that gigantic douche did not want to catch the attention of. Without the alert, would they have survived being found by this group? Would they have been picked up at all, or left to their fate? Did Mac condemn them by saving one man, and rescue them by helping another?

Too much. There's too much panic in her head. She shuts it off, lets the foggy feeling in, and drifts after Mac. She still experiences things, but far away. She refuses to come back until they are alone, eating spaghetti in an empty kitchen.

Mac notices the moment she does come back. Mac always does.

"You cool?" Mac asks after a long time gathering her thoughts.

Ana thinks about lying. Discards it.

"Not yet."

Mac nods and eats another bite. Somewhere, a child laughs and Ana's gut churns.

"What can I do to help?"

Ana wants to say there is nothing that can be done, that she'll just be stuck like this and that isn't so bad. It's a kneejerk reaction, though.

"Space," she says after a moment of thought. "Direction"

Mac nods, but Ana realizes that just because it looks like she's coping better does not mean she is. It just means that Mac has better methods than Ana or at least that methods that don't amount to ' _be ghost outside of body._ '

"You?"

"Setting up a watch and figuring out who put out the APB," Mac admits after a second.

Ana nods her head. She can do that. Also-

"Suburban Dad was a spook, right? And you did save him from a mugger."

Mac pauses, her fork frozen in her hand.

"Oh," she says.

Ana snorts.

"Dumbass."


	10. Chapter 10

When Victor gave the orders to impress him, he thought that the most he would get out of it was a good show of guts.

Maybe the two women would show him some survival skill, some true grit as they ran about the wilderness. He thought if they really went for it, they might try and be clever. Lay some traps like the old days, set up a night watch. That the fighting one, Mac, would take Girly by the lead and honestly try to give him a fight.

Then he would have crushed them. Broken them in like filly's with too much spirit, made them all nice and serviceable before he brought them out for a real show.

After dealing with the tail they picked up somewhere near the border, finding Striker's old base to be reclaimed by the lake, and any trace of adamantium grafting gone, Victor was in a foul mood and amended that maybe breaking them in would also mean breaking a few bones.

That changed though.

With a grin on his face, he supposes that while it isn't what he planned for, what they pulled off is far, far more impressive.

He lives for surprises like these.

The wildfire made it hard to track them at first. Impossible, even. The smoke on the wind, the embers in the air, the sounds of the flames- even he wasn't that good, but he wasn't dumb either. They only had a few paths out, bordered on all side by wilderness. Only one path would have led them back to civilization, and once he found a spot that hadn't been eaten by fire, he would have his lead.

He spent two days checking for signs of escape, circling the growing borders of the flames. The changing winds made it harder to be sure, covering signs of anything that might have been, but he found a lead eventually. One strong enough to make him laugh at the irony of it all, and then fill his mind with rage.

By the scenic lake road, there's blood on the gravel and the smell of boots on the ground.

Never polished his boots right, that Jimmy.

There are other scents as well. The stench of the Summers kid, and the bitch with the mind shit. The whole place is thick with that weird feeling of psychic crap, like some serious business got underway while he was busy.

But all of it put together points one way. After solidly proving that they could indeed be worth his while, his claims were yanked out from underneath him, and that isn't acceptable. In fact, that's a fucking punishable offense in his book. He found them first. He's the one that saw what they could be. Nobody just gets to take his shit.

The anger makes it hard to think. It always does. It would be easier if the Kid and Girly were here, scared to death but tearing the air apart with those sharp little words and funny expressions. Then he could laugh it away, ground himself a bit.

He shoulda known that runt would have screwed things up for him. He always did have to make everything goddamn complicated.

Jimmy doesn't get this though. Nobody gets them but Victor, and since they did such a bang up job impressing him, he'll show them what he's got to offer back.

* * *

When Phoenix woke up, reality was too much. Even as safe as she was within the depths of the lake, she was confused and overwhelmed. She didn't know what to do or where to turn.

But _Jean_ did.

Jean called for Scott. For _SummersCyclopsFriendLover_ , and she beckoned him to aid them. He became their focus when they were weak, and they poured themselves into reaching him. He became their focus when they were weak, and they poured themselves into reaching him. They touched his grief-ridden mind while he slept, whispered secrets and praises. They wailed, screamed, and begged him to come.

He answered that call.

However, when he was close and she rose to greet him, she felt the rancid touch of Xavier on his mind.

It enraged her, made her head writhe and the heart that isn't hers clench like a stone in her chest. Xavier was someone who Jean Grey trusted, who she once cared for.

One who locked away a part of her, banished it for simply existing.

He was there in Scott's mind. She loved and hated with equal passion in that moment, enough to want Scott to be free of his anguish and sorrow, while simultaneously consumed by the want to destroy any trace of that other.

It was the women who made her pause. The brave heart. The distant mind. One with her determination and anger, and one with her numbness and overwhelming faith.

Phoenix could not comprehend that sort of faith, that clarity of thought.

She thinks she wants to.

She thinks about it even when they wake up. Phoenix can feel the relief and calmness that flood them upon seeing one another. Despite their insulting words and the pain of their bodies, they feel safe together. Cherished.

There is a surety there, a fiery passion tempered by time and experience that exists as a plasma state. It's not about absolute control like with what Xavier did to her. They do not lock parts away from one another, but have seen each other as wholes and accepted that.

 _Anam Cara_ , the brave heart thinks when she wakes up, her eyes landing on the distant mind.

 _Anam Cara_ , Phoenix wonders looking at the man who thought this body dead for a year but came running when she had strength to give him only dreams.

Maybe in another world, one where those two girls did not exist, she would have obliterated Scott to get rid of any traces of the old man who hurt her so. Maybe in another world, she would wake to Logan and be consumed by the itching thoughts of _maybemaybemaybe_ in her heart, and the lust in his own. In that world, perhaps she never contemplates anything but the driving want to be free, never contemplating what that freedom actually is to her.

Phoenix isn't the Jean Grey that was, nor is she what the others assume she is. It doesn't even feel like her soul belongs to this body, but the distant mind feels the same of her own form. She isn't Jean Grey, but they are not dissimilar. There could be understanding.

"Scott," Pheonix says.

When she calls his name he looks to her, bruised and devoted. She can hear the elation in his head, the steady stream of ' _shesaliveohgodthankyoupleaseIloveyou-_ ' that reassures her that he is hers more than he will ever be that old mans.

"Leave with me," she says.

He blinks, his body language hesitant, but Phoenix can hear his thoughts. They will go together.

* * *

"Coulson."

Phil looks up from the file in his hand. In front of him, Nick Fury stands at a lazy attention, an old habit he slips into when tension is low, one that could be on purpose, or simply a misdirection of body language to suit his own ends. The workings of Nick's mind are intricate, and Phil is content to let his thoughts on the matter fade away.

"Sir," he greets back evenly.

"How's the situation?"

Phil hums blandly, a single solid tone he holds for three seconds but no longer, giving the impression of thought when there really isn't any necessary. The whole while he unflinchingly meets Fury's gaze.

"Tension between factions is rising. While the weaponization of the cure did secure the CIA a viable witness and credible information while simultaneously depriving Erik Lehnsherr -born as Max Eisenhardt and operating under the alias Magneto- of a general figure by the name of Raven Darkholme, it also seems to have exacerbated situation by legitimizing fears some factions had. Nothing solid yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was an uprising," he states monotonously.

What he doesn't say is that another high ranking officiate of the mutant leader, one previously assumed to be deceased, was caught on camera. Just outside the apartment of a certain waitress and dock loader

In the scheme of things perhaps the disappearance of two women isn't all that big. He deals with military regimes that topple nations on a daily basis, briefs himself on updated information on covert information cells at breakfast, and has the current rates of civil direst on his plate to consider.

However, Phil Coulson is not a forgiving man. He had one place, one constant feed of relative normality in his life, and that was ruined by a Canadian operative that is currently labeled deceased.

The file they have on the man is sparse at best, no more than a few sheafs of paper that label him as a suspected associate of a supposedly dead program that crossed one too many lines. From what little Phil has to go on, Creed went rogue after the SNAFU on Three Mile Island, only to reappear with a new look beside a known mutant rebel. He was assumed dead again after the incident they barely have any information on involving teenagers, senators, mutants, and the Statue of Liberty.

This whole situation feels a bit too slim on information for his liking, if he's honest.

Nick Fury is too good to have any unintentional tells, so the sound he makes in his throat is purely for Phil's benefit. An attention grabber, much like the pointless hum that Phil made before.

"A big cluster fuck the CIA made for themselves," The man comments. "Too much vested interest in one subject. Not a broad enough perspective."

' _Ah. Double speak_ ,' Phil thinks calmly.

Sure enough, Nick glances to the files in his hands. They are smaller than normal, thinner than even Creed's. Saoirse MacCullagh and Ana Roubideux are clean to the point that their existence is almost unnerving to a man who is used to having binders of data to deal with. What exists on them is the standard. No shady pasts on record, no rumors of any wrongdoing, and some scant medical records he assumes are scarce simply because they couldn't afford any more.

Normal. They are perfectly, one hundred percent mundane save for recent events.

The looks Nick gives him as when he looks back to Phil is telling. ' _I know_ ,' it says apathetically.

This is why he didn't bring Creed up. Because Fury already knew. He knew from the moment Phil submitted a request to look into this case.

"Care to add some perspective, sir?" Phil asks.

"What matters is that Creed isn't re-aligning with the rogue faction for now. If he crops back up, then we deal with it. Stop attempting to figure out the workings of a madman's mind, or find relevancy that isn't there."

Phil nods because that is sage advice, and he sets the files down on the desk in front of him. Perhaps that is it. He's done what he can, and the women should be safe. His part is done.

For some reason, it doesn't feel over though.

Maybe he should check on that.

* * *

"Logan, I know you are upset but I implore you listen to me. One thing, no more."

Logan is man enough to admit that he does not want to listen to the professor. Not after what he was just told, not after the man admitted to tampering with someone's mind. Whether it be for the greater good or whatever ass backward reason the old man has, there's somethings you just don't do. Some lines that should never be crossed.

He's also man enough to know that there once was a man he respected greatly in that chair. There are still things worthy of respect inside him, if not the actions he discovered just now.

So Logan shifts ever so slightly, inclining his head stiffly and angling away from the door.

"The women you offered protection to-"

"I didn't offer any protection. I said I'd cut off Sabertooth's damn head if he came a'knockin," Logan corrects gruffly.

"They don't believe that. In fact, I do think they are operating under the assumption that they are still captives on some level."

Logan turns to the man sitting behind the desk. His face, as always, remains still and stern, commanding yet understanding. He doesn't know why, but he feels like he knows generals who had faces like that. Maybe he did. Striker's labs jumbled things, but never fully returned any memories.

"Ms. Ana and Mac have just been through a traumatic event where they acted under the knowledge that they were very liable to die, but their reaction and their temperament speak of not just recent trauma, but past abuse as well," Xavier tells him.

Logan must twitch or something because the man shakes his head. Even without reading minds, the man can still read people like a book.

"It's in their behavior. They way they have closed ranks and kept to themselves speaks of a long-term familiarity, and the way that they have spoken -revealing only what the wished us to hear, and otherwise remaining silent- means they have experience guarding their tongues. Ms Ana eems capable of shutting her body language off almost completely, and Ms. Mac made sure to know everyone's location in the room at all times. This is not something one learns over the course of days."

Logan mulls it over in his head. He's seen the same himself, saw the slighter of the women stare at him like he was going to tear her apart with cold resignation in her eyes, and watched the one seated tense as tight as a bow string.

That's really none of his business, though. He said what he said, and he'll stick by it, but none of that is very relevant as of now.

"And?" he asks.

"And if I'm right, the forest fire was not happenstance. They do not trust us and stand very close to an edge that could lead to devastation. It is a miracle that they are aware enough to not factor all mutants in with Victor , but I do not doubt that if they believe it necessary, one or both of them would take drastic measures."

He grimaces, shifting enough that his weight rests on the balls of his feet. The fire thing is something new. A hell of a gamble on their part.

But how does the bastard fit into this? What does Sabertooth get out of starting a competition with Logan, misreading the whole damn situation with him and Rogue? Why would he drag two normal, non mutant women into this?

( _Why does the name Jimmy feel so familiar, like the smell of the northern woods and animal hides mixing with gunmetal in barracks?_ )

"You afraid they might torch the school if they get spooked?" Logan asks instead of what's really on his mind.

Xavier, for the most part, says nothing. He doesn't even change his expression much. He just looks at him and lets Logan work it out.

"You want them handled," he amends in a low growl. After the shit he just found out about Jean-

"I want them to be safe and healthy," Xavier says, and this time a bit of the calm leeches from his voice. "Despite what you may think, I do not generally go around using human beings as pawns in a game or treating minds as putty to shape at my whim."

"Get Storm to do it," Logan suggests instead. "They look at me like I'm going to tear them apart."

"Ororo is aware and will address this in her own way. However, Storm is the epitome of the environment around them, one which they can neither relate to nor understand on anything other than a superficial level. You may be similar in mannerism to their captor, but that simply puts you in a better place to act as opposition to the experience they have had," Xavier explains.

"They don't get classy shit and you think I can relate," he simplifies in a voice that clearly indicates his lack of interest.

"If you are so empty of empathy, then please imagine the situation we are all in right now. How do you think the world would react to news of a mutant attack on unarmed civilian women? How do you think this school would fair?"

Logan does not speak.

"I'm not a commander giving orders, Logan. You are not the only one I have brought this issue forward with. Things are tense, and I worry about Scott and Jean, but trust that together they may have a handle on themselves. Combined with my fear of how Magneto is reacting, gathering force, and Hank trying to talk the government out of full militarization against protestors, I need all the help I can get."

The professor stares at him unflinchingly, and there's no mind nonsense going on, but Logan feels the weight in that look. The calm expectation.

"But please, allow your disagreement with me about how I treated a patient many years ago -a case in which you have the barest details and no medical expertise- to stop you from facing the present troubles."

Logan cocks his jaw to the side. For a man dedicated to nonviolence and harmony, the professor just gave him a hell of a tongue lashing. Even worse, he's making sense.

"Fine," he grits out. "But when this blows to shit, it's on you."

He slams the door on his way out for good measure.


	11. Chapter 11

Mac gets the feeling that there's Some Sort of Shit™ going down in the big, swanky-ass mansion they are invited to stay at. It reminds of her of the trailer park sagas of her childhood.

Frankly speaking, Mac does not have enough shits to give about that right now.

She watches the silver car peel out of the gravel drive and wishes the Lady of the Lake and the guy with red glasses the best of luck. Hopefully, those two can figure out whatever the hell is going on in their lives. She'll admit it's a little (read: super) weird for her. Bustin' outta lakes in Canada, staring at them in the futuresque hospital, the weird psychic shit, these are all areas she's pretty unfamiliar with. Yet it looks like red-head and glasses guy are sticking together.

Good for them. Maybe they can figure out this big wide world and have an easy time of it.

"So…" Ana starts. "What now?"

Mac fights the urge to pace. She's already walked the room too many times, taking in the uncomfortably beautiful area with all the disquiet of someone who has never experienced this extravagance. The carpets -and who puts carpet in a place with kids?- is plush. Her toes sink into the thick, unstained fibers. The dark wood paneling on the walls is so sleek and smooth it's ridiculous. The color perfectly matches the furniture and carpet unlike the hodge-podge collections she's seen before. The beds are full sized, with sheets so soft they catch on her skin, and she felt like a heathen as she tossed and turned on what is the most expensive mattress she's ever even touched, let alone lay on. There's even a bathroom attached to their room. One with actual stone counter tops, complete with soaps in the shape of tiny leaves and clamshells.

It all makes her very, very uneasy.

That's why she couldn't lie down until their only possessions in the world, two tired backpacks filled with supplies, were brought to her. That's why she went to bed fully clothed, with shoes on her feet in case they had to dash. It's why she doesn't close her eyes until Ana's are wide open, the old skinning knife in her hands, rusted charms gently being rubbed smooth by her friend's fingers.

But that was last night, and this is now.

"Well, we have some options," Mac responds hesitantly, dragging her thoughts back to herself. She lets the stark white curtain drop back over the window, and a piece of it snags on her callused palm. Idly she wonders if this is what cats feel like when they get their claws stuck in fabric.

"Option one: we stay here," she states, looking to Ana.

Her friend shifts her eyes in a subtle way, a clear sign to Mac that she never really actually contemplated it. She fiddles with the end of her wet braid while Mac watches, observing her sort through the pros and cons in her head.

On one hand, they have nowhere else to go. Here, at least, they seem to have shelter, food, and water, which is a step up from running around the wilderness. There is also the tentative offer of protection.

On the other hand, they don't know these people from a hole in the ground. They have no guarantee how long the invitation is going to be extended, not a single clue if that offer of sanctuary comes with a yet unseen price tag. It also goes without saying that they are so out of their depths here it isn't funny.

"Option two: we leave," Ana counters.

Mac nods, because yes. That is another option, one she fully expected Ana to think of. They can run, God knows where, and God knows how long. They can keep running until their legs give out and they can no longer remember what's chasing them.

This has the benefit of allowing them to control their future. There would be no doubting their benefactor's intentions if they didn't have one to doubt. There would also be the fact that they wouldn't have to deal with any of this…weirdness.

Almost against her wishes, Mac finds herself staring at their backpacks. The juxtaposition of their shitty, worn-out, smoke smelling possessions on the richly upholstered chair is a stark reminder that this place isn't for them. That the weirdly magazine-esque mansion,the tension, and kids, this ain't their scene.

Don't get her wrong. On some level, Mac gets it. On top of typical school shit, and the drama of growing up, everyone here has to be wary of things like government cures. It's a weird mix of worrying about what to wear and also whether or not there will be sanctioned use of force against you if you show up at a mall. Again, if she could, if she was asked, she would help.

Maybe.

Right now she has a lot on her mind.

"Option three…" Mac trails.

The silence lingers, thick in the air.

"We start a fire?" Ana asks skeptically.

" _Ana._ "

The other woman throws her hands up in the air, braid swinging behind her.

"It worked!"

"It worked one time Ana. Starting a fire worked once. Let me stop whatever train of thought you're having and say that you cannot solve every problem life throws at you by starting a fire."

Ana makes a sweeping motion with her hands, the kind of gesture that implores Mac to reconsider.

"No."

Ana crosses her arms then, expression unbothered as if Mac will come to see her side in time. However her friend feels right now, though, Mac can pretty firmly say that Ana's options of running and/or starting a fire is not the mature way to handle things. They are grown ass women. There has to be a better way.

"It boils down to this Mac," Ana says in a lackadaisical tone. "We are stuck between stay and go. I trust you, and any choice you make regarding this manner."

Mac feels touched at the absoluteness of that statement. She doubts Ana would hesitate to follow her into hell, but…

Not for the first time, Mac feels the pressure. Ana doesn't have much motivation for things like this, always waiting for Mac to give the go ahead. If the choice turns out to have unforeseen consequences, then the responsibility for it rests solely on Mac's shoulders. Or rather, Ana will bitch about it until the end of time. She'd follow Mac into hell but complain every step of the way.

"Your choices have value as well Ana," Mac states.

Ana goes quiet, looking away. However there is a pleased flush to her cheekbones despite the sudden blankness of her expression. Reaffirmation is what she said she needed, and reaffirmation is what Mac can give. After all, they did take split shift watches during the night.

"Gay," Ana whispers, ruining everything.

Mac sends her an exasperated look, and Ana draws herself up, indignant.

"Look, it's all...it's all just fucking weird and convoluted," Ana defends. "You know it, I know it. There's no rhyme or reason to this. I mean, that geneticist that I super look up to? He spoke in my brain yesterday, addressing Logan, who apparently has some unknown relationship to the fucking guy who kidnapped us, but we are unsure what kind of relationship. All of this happened in a big, secret school for mutants in the very state we were taken from, and there is a vague suspicion that we were only taken in because you saved Suburban Dad. Suburban Dad, who is apparently a spook who hung around for hitherto unknown reasons."

There's a beat of silence.

"Okay, point," Mac gives. "But now we have to make a choice."

"Only we have no fucking clue what choice to make on account of there being no sense in all this. You might as well split open a goat and try to divine what choice to make from its entrails."

Mac makes a face at that vivid and rather gruesome metaphor. Why would she say that? Why even bring organs into this?

She swipes her hand down her face when she finally comes to most likely reason.

"Ana, are you hungry?" Mac asks tiredly.

Ana's makes a face, her features twisting around. That would most likely be a yes, and Mac can damn well guess the reason she didn't just come out and say it.

Fuck this situation.

"Let's get breakfast Ana, and then we can sort things out," Mac says. Ana nods, flashing Mac a grin, and there's a sense of relief in her chest. That, at least, she chose correctly.

* * *

There's no offal in the kitchen, but to be honest, Ana didn't expect any.

It's all good, though. There are eggs in the fridge.

Nobody actually said to help themselves. If she stops and thinks about it it's pretty rude to just take the food, but the fact remains that they don't have any subsistence of their own and have to make due with what there is. A carton of eggs combined with the box of spaghetti from last night only comes out to around five bucks in a grocery store anyway, so it's not too much. If she wants to get really upset about it, she'll even throw in an extra two for the gas it took to cook them and the water they used when washing dishes.

Then again, that's assuming they haven't racked up a massive medical debt for their impromptu stay at the future hospital, and they aren't going to be charged for dirtying up the clean linens in the atrociously clean room.

Jesus fucking Christ she hopes that has all been waived.

'It's cool,' she tells herself. 'It's all really cool. Just breathe.'

Ana checks Mac. She seems okay, and therefore Ana has nothing to worry about.

She whisks the eggs, her heart beating sluggishly in her chest. She doesn't know why this place has a communal kitchen when it's supposedly a school. Didn't think to even wonder about it last night, too preoccupied with everything that was going on around her, mind still quiet and numb.

Now though she has to wonder why there isn't a cafeteria, or whatever the rich boarding school equivalent of a cafeteria is. All the kitchenware looks sleek enough to go into an industrial kitchen. The pan in her hand is immaculate, unlike the chipped Teflon and old cast iron she has at the apartment.

' _Had_ ,' she corrects as a wave of homesickness crashes over her. She misses those pans, the ratty sofa, and the crumbling plaster. It hasn't even been that long, but it never takes long to miss those things when you know they are gone for good.

Is this her fault? If she had just stabbed Victor in the eye while he drove, they could have dumped his body and made it back in time. Maybe if she had hesitated more, fought with Mac instead of submitting like a coward-

With a slight swallow and a few blinks of her eyes Ana squashes down the feeling inside of her with a ruthless efficiency, letting only the barest traces linger inside. It's easier to do after their recent brush with Victor, like a refresher course or some shit.

She focuses solely on doing the eggs correctly, adding seasoning and making sure they are the perfect muted yellow without any hints of brown before hefting the pan over to the roundabout counter where the plates wait.

Mac smiles at her from where she's leaned over said counter, a reassuring thing that Ana really appreciates. It wipes some of the lingering doubts from her heart and eases her worries.

They eat in a comfortable silence then, punctuated by the light scrape of silverware over actually ceramic instead of plastic. Ana savors the taste of hot eggs instead of cold backpack food and greasy diner fare.

The heavy tread of boots against polished hardwood ruins it, though, and she feels the tension creep into her shoulders as Mac drags her gaze from her plate to the doorway.

Ana doesn't do the same. Instead, she watches the reflection of the move in her fork handle. Not as good as a spoon, but it is adequate enough to make out the general features.

It's Logan. He is staring at them.

A voice like Victor's sounds in her brain. It says 'Impress me or die', and 'Better than Logan and his brat' so firmly her hands tighten around the fork contemplatively. She feels cold, feels utterly still. She knows Victor, knows what he wants and what she can do to make him happy. It wasn't all that bad. He could have killed them, yes, but it's better than this tension. He was upfront, not smothering them with weird kids and soft things and impending debt. She understands how he works. He coming back anyway and she could, she could-

"Mornin'," he greets.

"Mornin'," Mac greets back reflexively. The same time she says it she slaps Ana's fork holding hand to the table, and when Ana glances up Mac is giving her a commanding look.

Ana carefully loosens her fingers from around the fork. Only the does Mac takes her hand back.

Logan awkwardly clears his throat behind her, going for the coffee machine. Even though she wants to slip away, she remains firm. She trusts Mac.

Her friend watches him carefully, and Ana keeps her mind empty. If Mac signals her, they can both be gone in a flash. He's big, fast, and knows the terrain better, but they can do it. They can do anything.

Logan coughs again, and Ana sees him tilt his head at them out of the corner of her eye.

"Not hungry?" he asks, and Ana realizes he's gesturing towards the eggs. They haven't taken a bite since they heard him coming

A tension builds in her gut, traveling along her spine. She tries to smother it down, but it builds in her head.

"This is awkward as shit," Mac states bravely.

For some reason, this is exactly the right thing to say. Logan snorts and the dread lessens enough for Ana to gather herself together.

"You're telling me kid," he says.

Ana winces. There's fire in Mac's eyes at that name.

The man pauses, and she doesn't know what he sees there, but it's enough to make him pause.

(A woman rearing back like an angry bear, and another lying as still as a gator. Tense, defensive, acting like the whole world is going to attack.)

"Victor called her that," Ana says coolly.

There's a beat, just a moment before he goes back to pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Won't happen again," he answers gruffly.

"We're in our twenties. Not _kids_ or ' _Girlies_ ,'" Mac spits, having to say something to let the anger out. "What is wrong with you?

That makes him do a double take, but Ana doesn't think it's because he's offended. She turns just enough to see him raise his mug to his lips and squint at them, brows furrowed.

"No joke?"

"For shits sake. Yes," stresses Mac.

"You look like you just got your license a year ago."

"Thanks. We moisturize," Ana quips sardonically. It just sort of slips out, and Ana goes still after she says it. What if it wasn't right? What if Logan isn't amused like Victor? What if-?

He exhales sharply in good humor, and she lets herself relax minutely.

"What about you? You look pretty ragged. Late forties, early fifties? Gettin' a little old to be hanging with children," Mac says acerbically, still not calm. Ana puts her hand over Mac's, and her friend glances down at it. Maybe it's the fork still in her fingers, or maybe it's the reminder, but either way she softens a bit.

Good. It's never smart to pick a fight with people who may be able to kick the shit out of them.

For his part, Logan just shrugs as he makes his way to the edge of the counter. He broadcasts his movements and stays at the edge of it instead of joining one of the side like they are, which is appreciated and is far too kind for her understanding. This is his place and he should go where he chooses. Allowing them ground is weird.

"Wouldn't know, only clearly remember the last few years. The rest is blurry," he says. "Think I took a head injury."

Ana glances at Mac, who glances at her.

"So hypothetically you could be like two hundred years old or something," Mac says after a second.

He sends her a bemused glance.

"That's a weird as shit reaction."

"I'm not hearing a no."

"Could be that old, I guess."

There's a beat of silence.

"Cool," Ana says, her tone flat. She removes her hand from Mac's, eyeing the stove contemplatively. There was aerosol cans in one of the cabinets, and some fancy ass olive oil in another. It worked last time.

" _Ana no_."

Ana breathes in slowly, turning to her eggs once more. Fuck this whole weird as hell situation.

The mood of the kitchen returns to where it once was. Tense, awkward, and flighty. Ana and Mac eat their food mechanically, knowing that they have no idea where the next one might come if the powers that be tell them to stop. They are hyper aware of the stranger amongst them, and the implications of his statement.

Logan gives them a weird considering look like he's weighing out an idea, measuring the merit of it before he can speak.

"You two like bourbon?" he asks eventually, despite the fact that it's still morning.

The answer that goes through Ana's head is an all encompassing 'please, yes' despite the fact that she's more of a gin girl herself. However, she will take what she can get at this point.

Or she would. The fact remains that Mac doesn't answer, and neither does she. They don't know him from Adam. They do not like him. They do not trust him. They do not trust this entire fucking situation.

So even though Ana wants it, even though she craves it, she holds her tongue.

Logan looks at them, and she thinks he sees it. He nods slowly at their silence

"The offer is open at any time," He tells them.

And just like that, he takes his cup of coffee and walks away.


	12. Chapter 12

There was a saying Mac once read. It was in a pretentious historical fiction she adored at one time for its depiction of the period, before she realized there was a lot more persecution of foreign culture going on than genuine exploration, but that's beside the point. The idiom was quality, even if the novel wasn't.

 _In vino veritas_ , it said.

 _In wine there is truth_.

She doesn't know if there is actually truth in liquor, but it does make things easier to face. She's not seeking oblivion. That's really not her style. Instead, she's trying to soften it, to dull the jagged edges that jut out and threaten to cut. It's easier to do with a pleasant buzz of alcohol in her veins. It's a fake courage, a cheap fix, but she's tired of sitting in their room while Ana just stares past, the both of them chasing their thoughts in circles.

Now, she didn't -doesn't- trust Logan. Doesn't trust anybody in this place, really, but there are some things you just can't turn down. After the ordeal they have been through, alcohol was on that list.

Never-mind that the two of them waited three days to take him up on the offer, or that the first couple drinks were taken in a tense, awkward silence as the women sized Logan up. Forgetting the fact that they made sure to seat themselves together by the door, and made damn sure they were out of arm's reach.

Mac's brain is pleasantly liquefied in her skull, and her body is relaxed in what feels like the first time in ages. Yes, it is a forced, slightly inebriated relaxed, but it is a comfort nonetheless. The booze makes it easier to let go of some barriers, and while she draws the line at getting completely shitfaced as a general rule, this sort of tipsy is exactly what she needed.

Judging by the way Ana is bonelessly sprawled out on the ground after returning from the bathroom with red-rimmed eyes everybody politely ignored, she needed it too.

The man of the hour at first settled himself a bit in the distance, providing much-needed space. As the hours whittled on and the drinks continued, he somehow found himself seated in a chair across from Mac. He looks somewhat sober still, despite how much he has consumed, staring out the window as the women alternately sprawl and work through their experience between themselves.

"I miss that stuff you used to get from the corner store," Mac confides in Ana, speaking in a whisper that isn't quiet at all. That's cool, though; she doesn't really notice. "The one you had to sweet talk the cashier into giving you."

"That stuff that was like 60% ethanol?"

Mac nods. Yes, that one.

"Gross," Ana remarks hollowly. She sounds washed out, but in a good way. There's an edge of fondness in her voice.

"Like your face," Mac remarks wittily.

"Like your face," Ana returns, equally sharp.

"Like Victor's face," Mac says.

"I don't know; his face wasn't so bad. It was symmetrical enough."

Mac laughs because that is the funniest thing she's heard in awhile. He is a terrifying man who straight up knocked her across a room at one point with barely any effort at all, but yes, Ana is right. His face was relatively symmetrical.

Speaking of him like this is cathartic, a strange sort of therapy derived from a lax, alcohol induced calm. Here he is a joke. Here, like this, they can unmake the idea of him in their heads, so he's not what he was. So he doesn't hold sway over them anymore.

Or, at least, that's the theory behind it.

"I hope he's dead," Mac chuckles out, mirth in her words.

"He's not," Ana says with a calm certainty.

"Goddamn optimists over here. You got a shit outlook on things," Logan comments.

Mac feels his words sour in her gut, diminishing any camaraderie the drink brought on. What the fuck kinda comment is that? What is he even doing here?

"You're right. You're totally right. All we need to do is change how we are approaching this," Mac snaps.

Logan blinks at her from his seat, unmoved and unruffled

"That's not what I meant."

"What then?" Mac replies. "What did you mean?"

"I ain't here to fight you," he tells her, point blank with no inflection in his tone. "You ain't gotta fight anyone here."

The words hit Mac like a sucker punch to the stomach, and she feels the anger inside her dwindle a down into shame.

 _Shit_ , she thinks.

That is...that is exactly the kind of mindset she needs to avoid. The 'Us vs. Them', the idea that life is constantly a battle, the attitude that there is a fight around every corner and hidden inside every person.

"Okay," Mac says, a little unsteadily. "Alright."

Logan doesn't look like he understands why she's thanking him, but he nods anyway, unlit cigar in his mouth, and the bourbon bottle in his hands. Combined with the tired tank top and jeans he's wearing, he looks just as out of place as them in the beautiful room.

Briefly, she wonders whose room this is. Maybe his, perhaps not. There's nothing there to make it any more personal than their own. A bunch of raggamuffin ghosts passing through a place too beautiful for them to linger long.

He's not Victor. The world is not comprised of assholes. She knows this. She just has to remember it.

"Ewwwww," Ana drones from the floor.

"What?" Logan asks, turning to the woman. He looks like he actually doesn't have a clue to what she's referring to.

"Honest emotional gratitude and communication," Ana voices tonelessly.

"As opposed to taking an hour long piss?"

Mac tenses because she knows it is exactly the wrong thing to say to Ana, who is iffy at best when it comes to letting things out. This whole ordeal has been one long exercise in Ana repressing while Mac reacts, and the fact that Logan called her on the one genuine time she let those emotions wash over her means she's probably going to regress harder instead of catching herself and actually stopping.

True to Mac's beliefs, Ana's complete lack of expression goes hard for a split second before relaxing completely.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I had to take a colossal shit, the likes of which should have made the christian god condemn me into hell for such an abomination against him," Ana deadpans.

The boldface statement startles a laugh out of the man, incredulous and shocked as it is. It's a sound that makes Mac nearly jump, because even though she just reminded herself he isn't Victor, and his laugh sound very different, the barking quality to it is very much the same.

"And the red eyes?" he asks after he collects himself.

"Must have forced it too hard and ruptured a vessel. I'm a bit constipated after everything if you gotta know."

He huffs out a few notes, and Mac thinks the way he shakes his head is a strange expression of 'well fuck me,' but that's what it reads to her nonetheless.

"Not even a flinch."

"I'm not sure what you're trying to hint at. This is my face."

"Who taught you that?" he asks in innocent curiosity.

There's a period of quiet after that, one that stretches just a little too long to be natural.

"Waitressing," Ana sighs after a bit. Her hands claw into the carpet as she pushes herself up, head tilting to the side. "I'm tired."

"Probably the booze," Mac adds helpfully, forcing herself up to a standing position. It's not the booze, and Ana most likely isn't tired, but that is her cue. Talk time is over for now.

She manages to get her feet underneath her even the world tilts kinda sideways and slips beneath her. She knew she was tipsy, but didn't realize that she was this far gone.

Ana lilts as Mac helps her to her feet. Her necklace wobbles out from under her shirt, a rounded cut of steel with half an Ogham word etched into it, and the sight is a balm despite her friend's long face.

"Have some hope Ana," Mac whispers.

"My hope is that the joke the universe keeps making gets funnier," Ana remarks, and Mac digs her elbow into her friend's ribs for the sass. The resulting recoil from Ana sends them both stumbling for balance, but they manage not to fall.

"Huh," Logan remarks from his chair. "Didn't realize you two were that drunk."

"That's because we can maintain our composure," Mac says, straightening herself out. Also, she maintains that she's not that drunk.

"You did alright," he answers, and she doesn't think he's talking about their ability to hold their liquor. Or, well, not just about that.

"Chin up, right?" she asks.

He flashes a grin, and his teeth are normal. Human. Not like Victors at all.

Maybe she doesn't need to keep up the watches at night.

"Chin up."

* * *

The universe's joke, in a pique of ultimate comedy, _gets funnier_.

This is the joke that keeps going, with all its nuances and subtleties. From the irony of saying Victor never fears and watching him get gunned downed, to the absurdity of going from waitress to woman who meets telepaths in the form of women exploding out of lakes in Canada, to drinking with someone she maybe is still contemplating attacking. It's got _layers_ , this joke.

And it _just keeps giving_.

The recent addition goes like this:

Two women, maybe mildly hung over, wake up in beds that aren't theirs but don't freak out. The beds were assigned to them by a telepathic geneticist who doubles as a dean or some shit, so it's all cool. They stumble around with something roughly resembling a morning routine, which is stilted and awkward because, despite the fact that they have no home, no car, and are living out of backpacks, their surroundings are the nicest they have had in their lives.

These same two women make their way out of their room of their own volition, tracing their steps in what has become a daily migration to the communal kitchen, avoiding the multitude of young children because even though last month rich kids running about would have just made them laugh, all of these kids have extraordinary gifts that make it possible for them to whoop ass. They pay for food that isn't theirs, and who should come in at that exact moment but a maybe two-hundred-year-old dude who has some unseen relationship with the guy who punched one of them across a room and also kidnapped them, only he doesn't remember because amnesia or some shit.

What does he say? Why he tells them that the illustrious and elusive dean/geneticist is waiting for them and that they have a visitor.

Knowing full well that they have absolutely no outside ties, but figuring that -Ana doesn't actually know what Mac was thinking then. Maybe that they have some semblance of debt to their keepers and that they must oblige? That things couldn't get weirder? That optimism is a valid choice?- They go.

Here's the punchline. The visitor inside the office? Some plain ass looking guy in a suit. The very same plain ass looking guy Mac full on went Hero Complex on. The start of this weirdness, the one, the only, _Suburban Dad_.

"Ms. Mac," Xavier greets, voice calm and melodious. "Ms. Ana. This is Agent Coulson."

 _Agent_ , he says. _Agent_.

Just like that, Ana has to swallow the urge to turn right back around, march up to their room, grab their bags, and run just as hard and fast as she can into the woods. Suburban Dad is a spook, and not just some local law enforcement or something. He's an _agent_ , and though Ana has no actual idea what that means beyond basic context clues, it sounds high up enough that she wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

"It's a pleasure to formally meet you," Coulson says evenly.

He smiles, and it's not the farce of one she saw him wear once or twice when they traded words. It's smaller, genuine.

"You son of a bitch," Mac returns, and her voice sounds slightly shocked. "You never even needed help."

"And yet you gave it with no expectation of anything in return," he states agreeably.

"So you what? Had your faith in humanity restored and when we went missing put out an APB?"

"Victor Creed is a dangerous man. I was honestly doing my job to alert specific agencies to keep an eye out. You could even say I just wanted to get my work done."

Mac breathes in sharply, and Ana thinks she's going to let out a bunch of angry questions. Instead, she fixes her jaw and dredges up a smile.

"Thank you, Coulson."

"Don't thank me yet; it's not quite over. There's still the matter of returning you to your lives. Unfortunately, your returning to Hunt's Point after this ordeal is inadvisable with the attention of Creed still on you. However, I may have a proposition for you."

Mac nods like that makes any sense what so ever, her hazel eyes shining. She looks as if this is all normal, as if this is what is to be expected.

Ana feels her head twinge as she tries to figure the reasoning behind the whole situation, droning out the ongoing conversation. There's something about...jobs? He's offering them a whole new life, just like that?

 _Why?_

Why help?

Victor, she can understand. He wanted something from them, mostly amusement and to use them to further his competition with Logan.

The others? She doesn't get them at all.

Coulson gets nothing from this deal other than the satisfaction of seeing two nobodies alive. They aren't exactly the best-educated individuals, and their resumes include entry level positions with certifications in areas far outside of what he's asking for. He's an agent, a specialized spook, and his kind have never gotten along with people of their class and backgrounds.

There is absolutely no need for him to be here.

Xavier and his crew are in the same boat. They receive a grand total of jack shit from Mac and Ana, and are pretty much from opposite ends of the spectrum. The kids here have lives Ana made fun of when she was their age. Everything is fucking elegant and polite, while she and Mac have been nothing more than weirdos who steal food and hole up the room they have been granted.

What do these people want? What does she have to do to pay back these debts?

"Ana?"

She snaps back to the present, and the eyes of everyone in the room are on her. She stands straighter under the weight of their gazes, fighting the headache and fatigue that the booze left in her system. Somehow she manages to scrounge up a smile, the same one she would give to customers.

"You zoned out pretty hard there," comments Logan, who for some unfathomable fucking reason is standing beside Mac. Should he even be here? Is that allowed?

"Ana, you okay?" Mac asks her quietly.

Honestly? She's confused and hungover, stuck trying to figure out what comedy the universe has in store for them next, but somehow still feeling calmer than she has felt in ages.

"What do I gotta do?" she asks instead.

The mood of the room becomes a bit awkward, but Ane sticks to the question. She doesn't get the situation. It's too good to be true, and things like this don't happen to people in real life. There has to be a catch, a gimmick, a trap.

( _She just wants orders. Tell her what to do._ )

"I don't have any actual numbers, but none of this can be cheap. Me and Mac have some jewelry, and combined with the cash we have it can maybe cover a single night we have spent here if only because we already paid for the food-"

"That explains the cash in the pantry," mumbles Logan. His face is pulled tight, his nostrils flaring, appearing to all the world like his mind is elsewhere.

She ignores it.

"-but medical visits ain't cheap, and there was IV's and shit. A rough estimate is two or three thousand for the both of us. Add in the cost of however the hell we got here, the time everybody spent, the alerts, and new apartment and jobs, the implied security...we don't have it. Plain and simple, we can't afford it. Maybe if you garner wages for the next five years, but then again, if you get us the work are you already entitled to a percent of the pay? I don't have any idea of how to even begin figuring out the non-monetary assistance either, so. What do I gotta do to make us all even?"

There's a long, weighty kind of silence.

"I'm afraid there has been a misunderstanding," Xavier says, incredibly vague.

Ana looks to Mac for a translation, but Mac is gazing right back like she cannot believe Ana. Which isn't an answer at all, the bitch.

"This isn't a transaction, . There is no debt here, or any need to 'pay us back' as you put it," Xavier explains.

"Is it...is it like a tax write off? A charity thing?" Ana asks.

Logan laughs, startled out of his distracted state.

"I'm serious. What do you want?" Ana asks, taking his laughter as a shameful sign that she misstepped. If someone would fucking give her a solid damn reason instead of this shit.

( _If she can give them what they want then she and Mac can be free. An order, just one order. Tell her clearly._ )

"Ana, you aren't in debt. You were the victim of a crime," Coulson tries.

"Tons of people are victims of crimes. On average, a one in thirty-four chance where we lived, a rate that only went higher because we are women and had a lower than average income. Statistically speaking, it was unsurprising save for the fact that the crime was so weird."

"Ana, you're doing the thing again," Mac advises her quietly, but that doesn't matter. So what if she's depersonalizing a bit? These are facts. Shit like this doesn't just happen.

The bewildered look she sends Mac must speak volumes, because her friend bumps her gently with her hips and smiles.

"It's the good in people, you Scrooge," she tells her.

Ana trusts that smile, would do many things to see it. That doesn't mean the words Mac says are any less fucking crazy.

Coulson seems to take pity on her, at least. He leans back in his chair, expression unflappable and his eyes fixed on her. He looked out of place in Hunt's Point, but here he looks like he belongs.

"If you must, think of it like this. The perpetrator of the crime against you is not an ordinary individual, nor was the nature of what he did. This isn't an ordinary crime, so you cannot grade your experience on those statistics," he explains. "Concerning payments, you and your partner are not liable for any reimbursement that needs to be made. Creed owes the debt to society, not you."

That clicks in her mind, or at least it partially does. Victor is an outlier criminal who took out a metaphorical loan on society, and any actions taken to reconstruct what damage he did are on his shoulder. In addition, because he's weird he's contaminated their experience by default.

All of this doesn't make sense because what Victor did doesn't make sense in the scheme of services or numbers.

Which is just another layer in this joke, because Victor made more sense on a personal level than any of this shit.

Ana resists the urge to rub at her temples, nodding to show she understands. Coulson smiles at her, and so does Mac, but Xavier looks worried for some reason she can't dredge up the energy to think about right now.

"Okay, what's the plan then?"

Mac sighs, most likely because they discussed it when Ana got lost thinking about the facts. Coulson doesn't seem to mind, but the other two in the room seem distracted.

"Witness Protection Ana. We're going to California to start over after Victor."

Logan sniffs like there's a bug in his nose, his face curling strangely, lip pulling around his teeth in a way that makes her nervous. At the same time Xavier opens his mouth to say something.

The window breaks, and a dart in Xavier's neck stops him before he can start.


	13. Chapter 13

Media says there's a build up that's supposed to happen before these things.

There's supposed to be an atmosphere. A mood. Some sort of warning and a whole bunch of lead up. There's a whole checklist that is supposed to occur. 1,2, then 3. Person A throws a punch, then person B. There's this whole timing supposed to go on, a tension that crescendos into conflict.

That's a lie.

Admittedly, there is a second when the window breaks that her brain struggles to come up with a suitable justification. It stutters and gets stuck trying to formulate the words to explain to Ana what happened when she zoned out.

Then Coulson is on his feet, Logan is moving toward Xavier, and Ana is shaking like a leaf.

It's so fast. Blink and you miss it.

Mac doesn't have time to think.

Even if she did she can't. Her mind is frozen trying to comprehend what is happening.

"He hid," Xavier says. There's a strange dart sticking out of his neck, and she has the vaguest thought that somebody drugged him because he looks like he's lost something she can't name, his eyes darting around as if he's losing coherency. His speech is fine, though, and his movement sure. "He should not have been able to-"

"The fuck is in your neck?" Logan interrupts, hands hovering just over the dart.

"I cannot hear," Xavier says confusingly. It seems like he can understand them just fine. "It's…"

"The Cure," Coulson announces, voice unwavering. There's a gun in his hand she never noticed him draw, but other than that he appears unflappable as ever.

Logan whirls on the agent so fast it's frankly remarkable.

"You-!"

"Victor is here," interrupts Xavier, looking lost. "Take them and go."

Mac feels her insides flush with heat, then go ice cold, then hot again. She feels nauseous and sick at the name, and her mind skips as it connects the pieces.

Logan looks like he wants to protest, his dour face grim.

"Prof-"

"He's here for them, Logan. Take them and go!"

Mac doesn't actually wait to see what happens because her hand is reaching out and grabbing Ana's before anyone else can come to a decision on what to do. For her, the choice has already been made. She and Ana are leaving, and they will boost a car if they have to. They won't get caught again.

Ana squeezes her finger around Mac's, and she can feel the tremors that go through them as she throws open the door to the study and begins to sprint. Her shoes squeak on the floors, and there is the echo of footsteps behind them, but the sound is mostly drowned out by the sound of her own heavy heartbeats. Her pulse has gone from steady to erratic in moments, and her hangover wars with the adrenaline that is suddenly pumping through her veins.

She catches something out of the corner of her eyes, but it only spurns her on faster. Somebody is beside them, pacing with them as they run through the halls. If they can just get their bags-

"Maybe we impressed him," Ana whispers. "Maybe he won't be-"

"We ain't going back!" Mac tries to assure her. "We won't get caught, Ana."

"Listen to your partner," Coulson says, and oh. That's who's running beside them. He has his gun drawn and pointed to the side, his expression composed. He may look like a soccer dad from the burbs, but this guy has balls of steel. She would admire that at any other time but now.

Which means-

Yes. That's Logan to their left, his face twisted into a snarl. He'd be scary enough as he was, a wall of muscle and rage, but he's even more terrifying now. There's metal coming from between his fingers, wickedly sharp and mean looking.

Maybe, she thinks. Maybe, just maybe they can get through this.

"Idiots," Ana says breathlessly. Her voice shakes, and Mac knows if she turned around there would be no expression on her face.

She keeps running.

They dash around a corner, down a long stretch of corridor. She has the hysterical thought that these halls are too long, too ornate, and that this whole fucking place is a goddamn labyrinth that they are stuck in. It's stupid and too much ground to cover because they have to _run_. They have to get away-

Victor turns the corner of one of the connecting halls, unhurried with a gun in his hands. His smile is mean, just like his laughing eyes. He walks the floor like he owns the house, and her arm is almost pulled out of its socket when Ana yanks on their joined hands to careen them to a stop.

He raises the gun, and Mac's heart drops into her stomach. She wants to vomit in fear and anger as the two on their side close ranks in front of them.

They were so close. They had good things in store for them.

 _How dare he_.

"You know," he says conversationally. "I don't usually need a gun, but I really fucking hate psychic shit."

He walks forward, his eyes glued to them. The sharp points of his teeth are bared like a promise, and Logan snarls as he advances as well.

"Hey there, Jimmy boy," Victor says, raising the weapon. Logan hesitates, and it occurs to Mac that the Cure dart had to come from somewhere. "Come to say hello?"

"Gonna cut your head off," Logan growls.

Victor huffs out a chuckle, his eyes brightening. His hand tightens on the gun, his claws scraping the metal of it, causing a terrible shriek of noise.

"Promises, promises," Victor states. "If you couldn't do it before with your head together, you sure the hell can't do it now."

"Victor Creed, you have an outstanding warrant in several countries," Coulson starts. He's the eye of the storm around him, unperturbed and unshaken. His hands are steady on his own gun, blue eyes clear as a cloudless sky. Mac upgrades him from 'balls of steel' to 'diamond bollocks hanging to his knees.'

There's a split second where Victor takes his eye off them to take in Coulson, and in that fraction of a moment, Logan lunges.

( _It's so fast. Blink and you will miss it._ )

Victor sidesteps on what seems like instinct, and Logan's bigass claws go wide. The casual air Victor had before vanishes, and Coulson opens fire. She goes deaf from the proximity to the blasts, ears ringing in a way that blocks out all sound.

Ana tugs on her arm again, and she watches as every shot Coulson takes sinks into Victor, knowing that it is doing jack shit. She watched him be mowed down by a drive-by, a few shots are nothing to him.

He moves quickly, advancing on Coulson who keeps firing and firing as Ana tries to drag her back. Her feet feel like lead beneath her as they stumble, and she watches Victor ram into Coulson like a bulldozer. The bigger man hauls him up like he's a deer in the mouth of a tiger, shakes him like a ragdoll, and fucking throws him.

The full grown man sails through the air until he smashes against the wall like a bird smacking into a window. He bounces, which she will think later is something she never expected, and he crumples to the floor, his gun sliding across the ground.

Mac's ears are still ringing, her eyes glued to that gun.

Victor stalks forward, oozing violence and menace. He's a giant who just got shot and kept walking. He's larger than anything, a childhood monster brought to life with predator's eyes that bore into her, and a hungry grin.

His lips are moving, but she can't hear him. She thinks she makes out the word 'impressed', but can't be sure. The only thing she is sure of is the fear she feels, and Ana's hand clamped crushingly tight around hers.

He's going to destroy them.

' _Hail Mary, full of grace_ ,' she prays in her head. ' _The lord art with thee_.'

Victor jerks mid-step, three metal claws protruding from his chest where his heart would be. He looks mildly disconcerted for half a second before he whirls into motion, his own gun falling from his fingers as his nails extending into vicious talons, and he tears at Logan.

' _Blessed art thou among women,_ ' she continues, figuring that this may have been divine intervention. ' _Seriously, a goddamn angel. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus._ '

"Get the gun!" she shouts, only catching tidbits of noise now. The hand in hers untangles, letting her go with the faith that she will return.

Giants go to war as she scurries forward, her hands shaking and legs clumsy as she moves. She tries to ignore the way they are thundering about, but it is so very hard. They both should be stopping, wounded as they are, but they rage against one another like demons. They rip and shred, claws scoring flesh and red stained teeth snapping at each other. She thinks they may be roaring, shouting words at each other she catches like muffled radio noise in her ears.

' _Holy Mary, Mother of God, Baddest Bitch to walk the streets of Jerusalem- pray for us sinners,_ ' Mac continues. She figures if she's going to shoot someone, forgiveness is in order. Even if it's Victor.

Her fingers feel like sausages as she bends over to pick up the gun Coulson dropped. It's heavy in her hands, an old weight that is both familiar and not at all. It's been years since she held a gun, and then never like this. Only in shooting ranges, plinking soda cans off targets in the range as a way to kill time.

"They're mine runt! You have your own!"

She fumbles with the pistol. There's like four safeties on the goddamn thing, and she can only hope that they are all off. The magazine drops when she pushes the release, at least, and reveals three bullets. With one in the chamber, that's four shots in all.

Four chances to shoot Victor in the eye. She hasn't been to a range forever.

' _Now and in the hour of our death_.' she pleads in her mind. ' _Or the time I try to hit a moving target the size of a quarter to erase a memory, you know how it is._ '

"Amen," she whispers, sliding the rounds back into the gun. She looks up, trying to ignore the way her stomach throbs and hands tremble. It goes against every backwoods lesson she was ever taught to raise that gun and aim it when not one, but two people are in the field, but she does it. She sucks in her breaths, hoping the air will steady her hand so she can line up the little dots on top of the barrel. It shouldn't be this hard, it's close quarters after doesn't want to hit Logan, absolutely can't screw this up.

But the giants writhe and twist. She can barely see their faces as they blur, moving about the whole corridor as they struggle against one another. For a second, her brain reminds her that she left Ana in their path, but when she glances over Ana isn't standing where she left her.

No, Ana is closer, darting forward like a wraith reaching for the Cure, and Mac knows damn well Ana won't hesitate to go in for the kill.

And that she will suffer for it.

* * *

Ana's scared. She so scared she can't breathe right, and she finally understands why people shit themselves because her guts feel like a bag full of worms squirming around her navel. The moment that dart came in, she knew he was back. Xavier could have been silent, never said a word, and she would have known.

She froze. She froze and she wants to continue to freeze. Everything is fucking bigger and meaner than her. Everything can tears her to shreds.

It's all wrong. She supposed to feel validated, but all she feels is fear coalescing in her chest and intestines like tumors. If they just stop and go back, maybe he won't hurt them as bad. She was right once and why won't they just listen to her again!? If they struggle it could be worse, they'll just get hurt more.

Logically, if Victor wanted them dead, they would be. He had all the chances in the world, but he didn't take them. Ergo, he doesn't want them dead.

He has The Cure. She doesn't know how he got it, and that doesn't really matter right now. What matters is that he's effectively nullified the sources of power that might have raised up against him in successful retaliation. These assholes aren't useful without their power.

 _He's going to win_.

They aren't listening, though, or maybe she isn't saying it right. Her brain is shutting down, and her focus is narrowing down to Mac. Everything else, everyone else, is nothing to her. Mac is what matters right now.

Mac, whom she loves.

Mac, who doesn't want to give in.

They run.

Victor comes for them.

He talks and Ana catches every word. She grips Mac's rough hand tight, and when the gunshots go off and give her tinnitus the likes of which she hasn't felt since she was a teenager, she drags Mac away. She tries so hard do what is right, but he talks.

"I am impressed," he says, after throwing Coulson across the room. "You did good."

Ana yanks, a sound escaping her throat. They did well, and he isn't angry. They should go back. It will be okay.

She pulls Mac away.

"That fire was you, wasn't it Girly?" he asks. "I thought it might be the Kid, but you got burns on you still. It was smart."

She did good. He's impressed.

Mac is stumbling, her face frozen and eyes stuck in the distance.

"I thought I told you to stop looking at her, Girly. You look at me."

Ana freezes and glances up. She sees the split second of triumph in his eyes before the claws go through.

The fight that ensues is breathtaking in the way that she literally cannot catch her breath. Her mind is blanking because they should be dead. The way they tear at each others flesh and bash one another around. A skull should cave in, and arms should break.

Yet even as she watches they heal, only to get wounded again. Their mutations allow them to fight harder, take a heavier hit, be all around more effective battlers than what a baseline human can ever be.

Ana feels mind fade out. The fuzziness comes in, and she blanks. There is nothing she can do against this. She doesn't have anything to do, no idea where she would even start.

"Get the gun!"

It's an order, clear and concise. She is moving to complete it before it registers why. Mac told her too and she's useful. By the one who breathed life into the world, _she will get that gun_.

It makes sense too because the gun Victor had has the Cure in it, and if they can just take away his mutation than they can end him outright. In fact, if they have the Cure than none of these people can hurt them like this again. They will just be normal people.

That thought is satisfying. She wants it. She wants them to have to feel like this, to be afraid and powerless. They were granted gifts Ana can only dream of, and with that gun, she can take that from them.

Ana makes herself as small as she can, pattering forward with the lightest steps she can manage. Victor and Logan rail at each other, their boot-clad feet stomping against the tile, dripping blood onto the floor. She worries that it might make her slip, that her shoes might squeak against it and draw their attention to her instead of one another.

They don't. The two of them are so caught up in their fight they don't even glance her way when she slips around them and grabs the gun in her strangely still hands.

The surety in her heart thickens as she wraps her hands around the oddly light weapon. It's a seemingly standard-issue .9mm, but the feel is all wrong. The slide is rounder, the magazine too thick and wide.

Her heart slows in her chest as she checks the chamber. It doesn't matter. She can shoot it.

Relief spreads.

 _She can shoot it._

Ana raises her head, keeping the pistol in both hands just like she was taught. She draws a bead on the both on the combatants, her index sliding off toward the trigger. They are big and mean and terrifying, but she has something that can solve that. She has something that will make it so they die just as sure as every chicken's neck she snapped, and every fish she gutted.

"ANA NO!"

She halts, shooting a glance toward Mac. She doesn't understand, this is what they wanted.

Her friend is adjacent to her her, a gun in her own hands. It strikes her like a slap to the face that she was wrong and she misunderstood the order. She had the other gun in mind, and Mac wanted it for herself.

The gun that won't work against these people.

Mac has the wrong gun. Ana has the right one.

She turns her head back around to the fight, but the two adversaries have stopped. Maybe it was Mac's shout that caught their attention, or maybe they caught sight of guns being aimed at them. Either way, they stand defensively across from one another, chests heaving as they pant.

Victor's eyes are on her, mouth open to breathe, red flecked spit staining his teeth. The sharp puffs of air that leave him sound cacophonous to her, and she wonders why she never noticed when they stopped shouting.

She shoots him. She slides her fingers just a fraction of an inch and shoots him in his stupid face, not really caring if it hits Logan or not.

Watching the dart sink into his cheek is the most satisfying thing she's witnessed in a long time. It is second only to the sight of his face flinching back and his skin paling as he realizes what she has done, as his wounds slow in their self-repair.

It's not enough, though. He's still breathing. He can still hurt them.

Ana moves forward to finish the job.

Logan turns at the sound of her steps, and she raises the weapon she lowered without hesitation. He must see her, because he stops twisting around, his face solemn as she moves.

"Ana!"

Ana keeps walking, but her footsteps hesitate for a fraction of a second.

"Listen to me Ana. That gun has darts-"

"I'll use my hands," she tells Mac.

"He's got two hundred pounds on you-"

"I'll make it quick."

"Ana. It's over. It's okay," Mac tries to soothe.

"IT'S NOT!"

The emotion is so explosive, so very sudden, it alarms her. She's scared but also furious. It's like she has no control as it comes tumbling out, her calm mind suddenly flooded with it.

"Tell me, Ana. Talk to me," Mac says. She's lowered her own firearm and is inching forward, but there is a long distance between them. Ana can fire again.

"I-" Ana starts. For some reason she can't explain she glances at Victor, whose face is twisted into a riot of discomfort. His wounds have stopped healing altogether, his lips twisting into a silent snarl. His teeth are still sharp, but she supposes there's only so much the Cure can do in terms of skeletal structure.

"I have to," she hisses.

"Have to?" Mac asks. "Or want to?"

"Both."

There's a stretching silence, and Victor is watching her now more than ever. Maybe for the first time he is even listening.

"The Cure isn't enough Mac. So what if he doesn't have his powers?! We don't have powers. That's not a fucking punishment! These people have gifts, they have power, and the cure just levels the playing field for those of us without. I want him to be afraid. I want him to have to struggle, to know what it's like. I want to have to live every hurt and every terror and-"

She cuts herself off, inhaling sharply. That's not what she meant to say. She doesn't even know if it's true. It's like a compulsion, a tick she struggles to overcome.

"He has a debt," she spits.

He owes them, and she wants payment in the form of seeing him die. In knowing he can never come after them again.

"Okay. That's okay Ana," Mac says. "But think of it like this; if you kill him, that's it. End of the line. I know you, you would make it quick, but what then? He doesn't suffer. Like this, without his mutation, he has to live with the fact that he has nothing at all. A guy like him? No friends, no family, just prison-"

"-A jail cell has a bed. Prison will give him medical treatment and food-"

"-Then something else. He has to pay the debt, right?" Mac asks her. "Don't shoot, Ana. Not that shit caked piece of trash, and not Logan."

Her friend is closer now, not near enough to touch, but near enough that Ana can hear Mac swallow. She can hear the breaths of everyone rattling around in her ears, the distant sound of heels on tile, and shuffling from the wall where Coulson fell.

"Being like us isn't enough. He has to pay," Ana whispers.

"He will. He will pay Ana, but in a way that doesn't get you sent to court as well."

Ana moves her finger off the trigger. She doesn't drop the gun, but she does point it at the floor.

She feels numb.


	14. Chapter 14

Mac's memory of what happened after becomes something of a blur.

There are a few things that really stick out, of course, but at the time she was...well, she's not proud, but she's pretty sure she went into shock.

Ororo showed up right around the time Logan shoved Victor to his knees, the impotent man snarling and snapping the whole way, but weak in a way that was probably way too satisfying to witness. She said something about securing the school, calling some dude named Hank, and a bunch of rapid fire shit Mac could not have cared less about then.

Mac had been dizzy and cold, feeling nauseous and irritable. She was confused and couldn't figure out why. She didn't honestly react until a blood covered Logan tried to gently take the gun from her hand, which got Ana all up in arms and...well.

The important part is that they gave them up.

Of course, they gave the guns to Coulson, who got trucked down to the future hospital with a set case of broken ribs, but he took them amicably enough, when he was aware and patched up six hours later.

It funny. Later she learns that the whole thing with Victor only lasted fifteen minutes, start to finish.

Then…

Crisis Incident Debrief. That what he called it, afterward. She always imagined they would be more military-ish, something that wouldn't seem out of place in a war movie, or a spy thriller.

However, it was just the three of them giving their side of the story, running through the situation out loud in the most sterile, bland way. It began with the dart in Xavier's neck up to them handing back his guns.

Then they did it again.

And again.

They did it until her voice was rough and her nausea faded away into a headache, her uncomfortable chill fled, and her hands stop shaking. At that point, she was exhausted, too tired even to set up a watch shift, and fell asleep in her chair beside Ana.

It's been a hectic few days since then, but Mac feels maybe, just maybe, things might be looking up for them. Sure, they still have no home, but Coulson seems doubly sure that he can get them into a system that can help. It's still ostensibly Witness Protection, because Victor had former accomplices, and though he's been carted off -hopefully not just to prison because Ana was right, prison is too nice for the likes of him- shit might still happen. The likelihood of them being targeted is apparently slim, but great enough for them to merit a new life.

Which is good. It won't be their shitty apartment in Hunt's Point, but it is better than living off another dime in a fancy ass mansion full of people Ana can barely bring herself to be around.

Mac looks over at the bed beside hers, where Ana is carefully writing down what appears to be a damn novel. Mac knows from experience, however, that she is just doing as she was told. Coulson suggested writing down what she felt, and Ana took that and ran the moment Mac seconded it.

There are books and journals scattered on the mattress around Ana with glossy covers, ostentatious titles ranging from wordy to succinct. In particular ' _Scandinavian Journal of Work: Recovery as an Explanatory Mechanism in the Relation between Acute Stress Reactions and Chronic Health Impairment_ ' stands out because of the sheer length of it. 'Hostage' by some MS Miron and AP Goldstein seems tiny in comparison. Ana has been consuming them for days now, referencing her frame of mind and justifying her reactions based on data from borrowed books.

It's weird. Then again, maybe her own way of coping is strange. She can't seem to sit still, can't stand the quiet and isolation. Even sitting on this bed feels wrong.

"Ana," Mac says, shifting to her feet. She wants to pace some more, maybe walk around the grounds a few hundred times. It doesn't help, but for some reason exhausting her body help out her mind. She feels less trapped when she's moving, and then she can keep an eye out for anything that might go wrong. It's not like when they first came and she distrusted everyone, and not like she believes them either. It's...it's hard to explain, actually.

"I'm going to check the mansion again."

Ana hums, glancing up at her. Her friend's face is tired, her thoughts obviously elsewhere.

"Okay. I can be ready in-"

"I can go alone, this time."

Ana seems hesitant, but her eyes drift down to the pen in her hand consideringly. She quickly glances back up, as if caught contemplating something horrid.

Mac smiles wanly.

"Space, Ana. I need some space."

"We have kinda been up each other's asses," Ana says slowly.

"Ana, we haven't been apart since all this began."

Ana nods once, her head slowly drifting back to the notebook.

"Then be free of my anus Mac," Ana says monotonously. "And in doing so remove me from yours."

"You disgust me," Mac tells her affectionately. Ana flips her the bird as she moves toward the door.

Yet, when it's all said and done, it's a bit weird to wander around the mansion without Ana glued to her side. Not bad, exactly, just different. She didn't notice how much someone else -even the other half of her soul- being there just kinda itched at her. It's nice to walk along by herself, to drift down the halls and let herself outside. It's even better to circle the mansion with the first freezes of winter crunching under her boots, sharp winds biting at her face.

It's….peaceful.

Mac takes a shuddering breath, feels the cold like weirdly pleasant shards of glass in her lungs. The jitteriness she felt in the room is faded and dull. There's no Victor hunting them, and even if he was, she could take him now. They have a plan for the future, a place to stay, and a way to live life again.

It's been a long time since she has felt peaceful.

It isn't what it was. It's not New York, which she knows will always hold her a shard of her heart. Nor is it the hard packed earth and squeaking hinges of the town they grew up in. Somewhere inside her, she knows that this experience has only picked at old wounds and dragged up things she should have forgotten, but now…

Now she feels like she can deal with those things. There is time to work through them. She can heal.

Footsteps, weighty and sure, crunch their way through the frost toward her. They are louder than usual, probably purposefully so. Mac appreciates that more than he probably knows, a wordless acknowledgment of the fact that he realizes he makes her wary. Perversely, it is his recognition of her unease that makes her calm again.

She glances at Logan out of the corner of her eye. He's wearing a jacket, bundled for warmth. She supposes it might be hard to stay at a warm temperature when your bones are made of metal.

"Surprised to see you out here," he greets. There's a lit cigar dangling from his fingers, and when he takes a puff, Mac can't tell what is smoke and what is misted breath.

"Gotta enjoy the cold when I can," she says. She shuffles her feet underneath her, tilting her head to watch the bare trees sway against a background of gray sky. The last of their leaves have fallen away, bright yellows and faded browns scattered on the ground.

They stand in silence for a bit, just watching the area around them. The tranquility she felt still lingers inside her, and she is content to just stand for the moment. The pressing need she felt in the room is no longer there.

"Scott called. Said things got shaky at the clinic where they make the cure, but he and Jea- Phoenix were there. Weren't really accepted at first, but the fed made a few calls, and everything worked out alright," Logan tells her casually.

Mac furrows her brows because she has no damn clue who Scott is or Phoenix. She also does not know why the fuck this matters to her at all, or why he is sharing.

Logan must see the confusion on her face because he sighs and plants the cigar between his lips. He stuffs his hands in his coat pockets and stares out at the trees.

"Thought it might make your friend more at ease to know they stopped the facility from being trashed. Cure ain't being mass produced no more, cause apparently, they were using some kid as the source, but it's still there. "

Mac turns away from him then. She glances back at the school behind them, trying to pick out the window that belongs to their room. She can't though, they all look the same from outside. She turns back around, not looking at the man standing beside her, but not looking away either.

"You know, she once held the opinion that the cure was the shittiest, most wasteful thing ever invented," Mac says conversationally.

Logan lets out a surprised grunt. A sort of 'no shit?'.

"Yep," Mac states, popping the 'p.'

He inhales, and the end of his cigars burns bright orange for a moment before fading down as he exhales through his now.

"You?"

Mac thinks about it. Looking back at all the fucking shit she's been through, it's surprisingly easy to find her answer.

"I just wanted to help, but that kind of got shot to hell."

Logan nods his head. To her surprise, he grins. He doesn't have sharp teeth like Victor did, just human ones.

"Funny to you?" she asks, maybe a little defensive.

"Seems to me you both got exactly what you wanted," Logan says. He takes his hands out of his pocket and pulls the cigar from his mouth with one hand, and pinches the burning end off of it with his other. Mac winces as the heat burns his skin, but when he hold his fingers up, the blisters are already fading from view.

"Because you stopped your friend, I'm still a mutant. Because you saved the fed, he wound up here. He called his guys, and now that facility will be regulated to hell and back because of what they found. And because of you, Creed is no longer the threat he was. Seems to me you helped a whole damn lot."

Mac opens her mouth to speak. She sincerely doesn't know what to say to that, so she closes it again.

"Xavier," she manages finally. "He's still…"

Logan raises his eyebrow at her.

"Bub, you telling me you could have done anything about that?" he asks.

Mac doesn't answer.

"You know, your friend had a point too. Even if he doesn't find a cure, which I'm pretty sure the old bastard will do, what he has now isn't bad. He's respected, rich, smart, and surrounded by friends. Sure shit is weird, and there's probably a bunch of law making nonsense and politics and work to be done. Maybe the government goes back on those treaties, and perhaps things get rough. I think your friend might have a better knowledge of dishonest governments then we do, though, and I'm also pretty sure that you two are no strangers to rough."

"But-"

"Face it, Mac. You wanted to help, and you did. You chose that destiny for yourself, and you can fight your fate, but you'll just end up losing," Logan tells her.

Mac shuffles awkwardly in her place, feeling the cold nip at her cheeks. He's kinda got a point there.

She figures if she looks at it like that, she might not mind losing all that much anyway.

* * *

"I got to read your paper."

Ana smiles, making sure that her expression is edged with faux sheepishness, tinted with just the right amount of self-deprecating apologeticness. It's not a new look for her, but she figures this it's better than expressing what she feels.

Soft numbness still hangs over her. It's gentler now, a light fog that drifts around embers of absolute rage and lingering fear. She is back in her body now, processing everything in a dizzying cycle of sleep, work, and heavy rumination.

She still feels physically exhausted by it.

Research dubbed it Acute Stress Reaction, her brain chemistry flaring up like city lights. Stimulation of the pituitary-adrenal axis, resulting in hypothalamic secretion of the corticotrophin-releasing factor. Which makes adrenocorticotropin, 8-lipotropin, and 3-endorphin. Fancy talk for 'working through shit and feeling like numb crap.'

There's probably a hormonal cocktail still floating around her skull. Even the ones that aren't supposed to be there. The catecholamines clearly kick in when she remembers that she is surrounded by people who could crush her and Mac like bugs, making her pulse rate skyrocket and muscles itch to grab the woman she loves and run.

It's normal, though. All within the statistic boundaries when she adjusts for outliers.

"It was good. Quality work, something I might have expected in a dossier, or as the result of a study," Coulson tells her. "Very academic."

Ana feels her smile turn a little sardonic at that. Academic.

"I read some stuff," she returns politely.

Coulson turns to face her, twisting carefully in his chair and keeping his mending body in mind. He looks non-threatening, and that's why she lets him in the room. He's baseline human, he is a surmountable obstacle, even if Ana knows very well that he has a gun on him right now. It doesn't really bother her, not in the way that the others do.

It's a knee-jerk reaction, Mac says. A cognitive bias against mutants that starts with Victor and doesn't seem to end. Intellectually, she can agree with Mac and knows it is unfair.

That doesn't stop her from feeling afraid when she stops and remembers that those kids running around can do terrifying things. It doesn't make it any easier to breath when she sees one of them move too fast, or make the instinctive fog disperse when they easily lift something three times her weight as if it is a feather.

It's a new tic, another obstacle to climb. Hopefully, she can get over it before whatever curveball life throws at them next smacks her straight in the face. She has to be ready for that because she knows it's coming.

Something always happens.

"Not what I had in mind when I suggested you write down what you were feeling," he says conversationally. "But good."

Ana feels something flare at that. An instinctive 'What did you have in mind, I can do better' sort of thought she cuts off before it can start. It isn't easy.

"Can I be honest with you, Ana?"

"Are you admitting to lying at some point during the conversation?" Ana asks. It's half genuine curiosity, half defensive wordplay. Usually when somebody inquires that they are segueing into something a little too emotional for her tastes.

Sure enough, despite his pleasant smile and passive face, Coulson's words are uncomfortable to hear.

"You did the right thing, Ana."

Her smile slips a bit, and her stomach does this strange clenching thing inside her. The praise is good, but it feels wrong.

"Nah," she says. "Mac's the hero, not me."

Coulson grins a little wider and shakes his head slightly, never once dropping eye contact. She feels so strange holding it she moves her gaze to the bridge of his nose instead of taking those eyes straight on.

"She's courageous too, but I stand by what I said. It was a little intense from what I hear, but in the end, you did the right thing. "

Ana wants to he's wrong. She knows, thoroughly and honestly, that her intentions were not what he would consider right. She wasn't standing up for anybody but herself and Mac, she wasn't saving people. She was surviving, a cornered animal striking out. Ana was motivated by nothing more than rage and the desire to murder in cold blood.

She wanted him to suffer.

Still wants it, if she's honest.

That's not right.

Thankfully, Coulson seems to see how uncomfortable she is with the line of conversation and drops the subject. For a moment, there is just a stilted silence in the room that just verges on companionable.

The quiet allows her to think of what is going to happen to them. This Witness Protection that, in her opinion, is little more than a farce at this point. Still, she's grateful for if, if wary. It still feels like she owes the people around her, as if there is something that has to be paid off.

No one, however, seems keen on setting up any financial return systems, however. Ana doesn't have much else to give other than thanks.

It occurs to her she hasn't even given that.

"Thank you."

Coulson twists his head around to look at her. In the quiet, he had gone back to glancing at the wall.

She looks at her hands, noting the burns that are finally fading away. Soon, she might get to the point where others might not notice there were any burns at all.

"You know. For the APB. For trying to protect us when Victor came. And, you know, giving us a way to get back on our feet," she mumbles. It's too sincere, too real, and it makes her feel weird.

"It's the least I can do."

Ana gives him a wry smile. That's just untrue. The least he could have done is turn the other cheek and walked away. This wasn't his problem, and he didn't owe them anything. Even if he is a fancy agent, he went above and beyond the call of duty in this situation.

"And Ana?"

She looks up from her hands.

"I hope you have a happy life, but if trouble ever finds you, feel free to call."

"I don't think me and Mac are destined for a happy life," she huffs in amusement.

"Maybe. But whether it's your fate or not, I think you can make it happen."

Ana goes back to looking at her hands. She thinks of all the things that have happened, of the seemingly endless running. She thinks of trying to stay out of dodge only to have Victor find them. She remembers knowing that it was inevitable because something always happens.

Then she weighs it against the fact that she met Coulson. She thinks of Mac, her Anam Cara, standing tall by her side. She remembers Victor's face as she shot him in the face, stripped everything away from him in a second. She searches herself and finds the ember she discovered then and there, that core that screams that she will not be a victim again.

Maybe they aren't fated for a happy life. Maybe they fight, and maybe they lose.

Maybe sometimes, though, they win.

* * *

 **AN: Heads up guys. This is the end of what I had done, and tbh it kinda feels like an end altogether. I might continue, but I am working to on an original novel and have RL commitments. Let me know what you think.**


End file.
